Of Fire and Ice
by Harlequin Sequins
Summary: When Joseph Liebgott is arranged to quarter with a quiet seamstress, he turns her life upside down with his ill manners, his constant dripping of blood and mire on her floorboards and his utter lack of regard for any of her wishes...Liebgott/OC.
1. Invasion

_Author's Note: _Well, a lot of the OC's are soldiers or nurses in this fandom, so I thought I'd try a civilian on for size. A seamstress, to be exact, living in Aldbourne. From what I understand in my readings, paratroopers of the 101st were often quartered with civilians during training. Winters and Welsh being two of them. You will learn more as I go on so try not to be _too _critical...if I miss anything by chapter five, then you can jump on me for being unrealistic. But until then, let me be the mean writer and unfold things slowly. If this ever makes it past the first chapter, that is...

disclaimer - I own nothing of Band of Brothers and no disrespect is intended toward the men of Easy Company. This is merely fiction and is based on the fictional portrayal of Joe Liebgott.

* * *

If you care to ask me if I deserve him, I can tell you, most honestly, that I don't.

I was not anything extraordinary before he arrived on my doorstep with wings of blood wrapping around a long gash in his uniform. I was no bird of paradise, no exotic rose. I am a seamstress. Quiet and demure is my place in life and I keep it well. And where he is made of fire and fights in the street late into the night, the countryside pooling in secret currents of his blood, I am of early mornings and watery breakfast tea. There is no common ground on which we stand and yet he invites normalcy into the doldrums of my life to stay. It should be that he is the epicenter of disaster. The pebble thrown into the placid lake, if you will. The equilibrium which I have tirelessly worked to sustain all my life has been upset and yet…I can't bring myself to care.

And the ripples drift onward.

Toward another horizon.

He is my tomorrow.

* * *

Early September;;

* * *

It is late when I wake this morning. The alarm clock still sleeps at my bedside. It is a knock that slips through the quiet house like a breath of wind and rouses me from dreamless sleep. But it is no gentle rap on the door that lures me into the kitchen, dressed only in a moth-eaten robe and a pair of bleary eyes. It is as if all Hell has been unleashed on my doorstep and it would be a lie, a terrible lie, to say I am not afraid.

I am awake now, very awake. What lonely woman in her right mind would not be fearful of an unexpected visitor insisting so raucously on entrance into her home? I can think of none. With trembling hands, I slide the bolt lock from its sheath to open the door. Before my fingers dare curl around the knob, I take a quick look through the handmade gauze curtains draped over the window. For privacy, I could say. Mostly it is to scatter the appearance of poverty which I work so hard to keep away from the world.

It is not their business if I am poor.

Outside, a figure is being pelted by the pouring rain. Nothing strange here. It is always raining in England, in Aldbourne. The sky knows nothing if not the sated feeling of water coursing through its belly. What is strange is that the figure, made vague by the fog sticking to the windowpane, is not merely a man. A soldier. Not British either. The khaki of his uniform is stained dark with water and his thick hair lies plastered to a gently sloping, milk-pale forehead. My heart stammers over the perfect words to describe him. Beautiful is not enough. What should such a man want with me?

Of course, I think, silly girl. It is so blaringly obvious as I regard the large gash in the fabric of his uniform above the heart. Ghost stains of blood surround it in varying forms. From insignificant droplets to unsightly smears. It will be a bugger for certain. Scrubbing such a blemish out after it has dried and caked itself so deeply into the heart of the fibers will be no easy task.

Yes, he must want a mend, a wash and a starch. Easy enough.

Years of such practice with the needle and intimate knowledge of how to use it has peeled my eyes for discrepancies in clothing. A poor stitching. A terrible patchwork. Uneven sleeves. I have made it my life's work to build clothes up from the first spool of thread the way an architect would erect structures founded upon the ground. My grand churches are wool dresses for the women of Aldbourne. It is simple work, but grueling in its requirements for patience for some. I do not mind it, for it offers peace of mind and solitude in return for suffering the long hours of hunching over in poor light, searching for the place that the needle shall slide in.

And all of this has lead me to define people by what they wear. Their social stature, their character, their intentions. Even their habits can be read as if from a book of cloth if translated correctly. Of course, not everything is written into the folds of a new dress or tucked away into freshly mended pockets. But there are some things that cannot escape scrutiny. Not if you know where to look.

Another terrible beating upon the door. A nervous hand travels to my lips, where they part and allow the teeth behind them to gnaw on bone-thin fingers. The nails are uneven and chewed nearly to the quick from such countless hours of worry. Not enough food. Not enough gas for the lamps. Not enough blankets for winter. Never enough.

Shall I let him in? It seems a foolhardy and unfounded risk to take in such desperate times...

His fist pounding on the door tells me I should. My palm clamps around the doorknob and the partition falls away, leaving me completely vulnerable to this man's dark gaze. His eyes narrow and dilate almost simultaneously, contradicting what he is really thinking and the sort of intimidating appearance he wishes to make most clear to me.

"I guess it's the custom around here to keep people waiting in the rain, huh?" He's scowling. This is never a good sign.

"I am sorry, sir," I reply. "I'm afraid you've caught me on a late morning."

He examines my state of dress. Or lack thereof. "You don't moonlight as some hussy, do you?" His head pokes around my shoulder. "You ain't…got a john in there?"

The response to such crass accusations is immediate. My hands fly to the collar of my robe and I clutch it to me a little tighter. "I_ beg _your pardon, sir?"

He laughs. As if to himself, but he is allowing me to listen in on his private thoughts. Perhaps he is like many men of the army – no manners to speak of and no girl to tame their wild tempers. "Of course you don't. What the hell was I thinkin'? I can tell just by lookin' at you. You ain't the type."

I'm not quite sure what to deduce from this fellow's character. He most certainly isn't polite. That, at least, is as clear as day. The rest of him, however, is yet to be determined. He is a shadow upon my wall that I wish to make human. Sew into a skin that I can recognize. Silhouettes wear only their anonymity…I cannot read what isn't entirely human.

And the fact that he is only silhouette, the reflection of night stealing into the arms of morning, makes me want to crawl inside of myself. Like a crab climbing into his shell. Safety from the unknown. What if this man is some sort of violent rogue? Perhaps it would be wise to refrain from informing him of the lack of male presence in this household.

"Aren't you going to let me in?" He asks, tearing me out of my thoughts. I blink and gray light wanders back into my line of sight. He is blocking some of it from me, the diluted sun. Certainly a mere shadow.

"Of course, sir," I reply, opening the door a little wider. "I do apologize for making you wait in the rain."

He doesn't say anything. Not a refutation of misplaced apology or even an acceptance of it, like most would offer at the very least. He simply charges through, a one man stampede, and before I can even return the door to a secure condition, I hear the legs of a chair skidding across the floor. He has certainly made himself comfortable. And without even batting those pretty eyes of his.

I turn and find him picking at the silk wedding dress I left, abandoned in mangled disarray, on the table in a fit of exhaustion the night before. His brow is furrowed, as if it is such a foreign thing beneath his fingers, and he is sifting through the layers of lace trim and pearl-colored buttons. It is the first fine dress I have made from scratch in months since rationing began. A young woman in London waits ever so patiently for the raiment that she will wear on the happiest day of her life.

Happy, because he must be well-to-do. When he came to order the garment, a package of materials under his arm, he was kind, gentle of manner and wore evening finery in the afternoon. He left a small pocket of money on my table in the wake of his departure. Three pounds and one shilling. The usual man at the market was doubly surprised to not only see me twice in one day (I had just completed my weekly shopping trip earlier that morning), but with such money that he had not seen on my person since I was a little girl begging him for sweets on market visits with my mother.

That seems not so long ago. Now that I think on it.

The man at the door has grown bored with the silk dress. He sighs and leans back in my derelict little chair that is situated before a rickety table (a book on the history of British parliament hoists up one leg that is shorter than all of the others). Silence grows old between us. I can feel its aging whiskers brushing against my terrorized nerves. My strange visitor seems in no rush to have his clothes mended. In fact, he seems in no rush to do much of anything but bask in a little quiet for once. A soldier's life, I am to understand, is no tea party. I cannot imagine what it must be like so I do not attempt sympathy; I know it shall be ill-taken and surely unrequited even if I should have liked to try.

His dark gaze turns on me so suddenly that when I feel the shift of its focus and find it on me so suddenly, like a specter in the dark, I am practically torn out of my skins in fright. "So?" He says tersely, no more a question than anything he's addressed to me since I met him not ten minutes before.

In many ways, though it would behoove me to keep such dangerous thoughts to myself, he exudes an animal strength. A powder-keg intensity that, if a match strikes too close to it, it will explode without warning. It is not selective. It will consume anything that stands in its way.

"Pardon?"

His entire countenance relaxes into a smile, but even a gesture that is intended for ease is made nerve-wracking by the look stuck in his eyes. "What…" he laughs. "Don't tell me you didn't get your morning post yet either?"

Rude fellow, isn't he? Assuming, too. A very disagreeable pair of traits. I clear my throat nervously and wade through the dissipating haze of silence to find the only tea pot I own. It's been used recently, the cracks and fissures lined in tea stains, but I'm sure he won't mind. "I'm afraid I have not. Would you like some tea, sir?"

"Tea is for pussies, _I'm _afraid_,_" he replies. It is no feeling that makes it known that he is mocking me. It's straight fact.

I can feel his eyes on my gaunt figure, lying hidden underneath the protective shield of clothing, though I am not surprised that he sees the evidence of how terribly skinny I am in the sharply sculpted angles of my face. It lies in shadow beneath the light, some made dark by slightly protruding bones.

He clicks his tongue thoughtfully, running his teeth over his contemplations as if to taste them. "Looks to me like you _live _on boiled water."

Another knock at the door sounds like a bomb falling throughout the small kitchen. I race toward my only reprieve from this tireless insult factory, only to find myself facing a new threat. The morning post.

"Ah, Miss Gray! Top of the morning to you my dear! Though," the postman pauses for a moment, assessing the color of the sky. Still gray. Still pouring its heart out. "Perhaps you must be content with the bottom. Not a very pretty picture is it?"

He hands me my letters. One of them is addressed to my father in capped letters, as if typed. Not at all personal. "If a child never sees the sun, will he ever miss it?" I reply.

"Ah, our little village philosopher. Ever quick with those eye-openers of yours!"

"Aw, fuck," comes a voice from behind me. It shakes with more laughter. "You've _got _to be kidding."

He leans in, tipping his hat forward in an attempt to not appear nosy. The unfurling crevices of a pensive scowl betray his good intentions and I bring the door a little closer to me to keep the obscurity of my pest.

The postman hums disapprovingly, though he goes about it so discreetly that I can't blame him. I, too, am not at all fond of the idea of such a man sitting at my table as if he is the head of the house. "Good day to you."

He is off before I can compose the proper farewell, ducking beneath the cover of rain as if it will ward off the chill. A request for him to join me for a cup of warm tea at the local tea room lodges in my throat as I watch him tread through a fresh quagmire down the lane. His boots are waterlogged and stained with mud and his clothes can boast no better shape. The poor fellow must be soaked through.

No, it is selfishness that wishes him back here. The entreaty dies in vain. I want to escape my brutish company, perhaps give reason for him to recall why he is here and take his leave. Perhaps if I am forward, make it known that he is not as welcome to do as he pleases in a stranger's home…yes, that should do.

I turn, only to find myself face to face with my tormentor. He certainly is foreboding when he is standing, for he has the advantage of a taller stature. He towers over me. And he knows this well, turning the full effect of his intimidation on me. The moon eclipsing the tiny star.

"Look, lady. I'm tired. I've been traveling for two fucking weeks on a boat full of stinking ass men and all I want to do right now is lie down on a proper bed and get some shut eye. Is that _too _much to ask?"

"This is not an inn, sir," I reply. "I'm a mere seamstress. I believe you are confused…"

He tears the first letter out of my hand, the one with the impersonal font, and waves it in front of my face like a flag. I want to tell him that I am no simpleton, that I can, like most civilized people, read.

"The letter. _Now_."

I hurry to open it. Who knows what he might resort to if I do not? Violence. Cruelty. Anger. There is no knowing.

"_To a __Mr. Alfred Gray," _I recite the print aloud, more to myself than to him. "_Due to our lack of sleeping facilities, it has been arranged for Private Joseph D. Liebgott of the 101__st__ Airborne Division to be quartered in your home for the remainder of his training in Aldbourne. We thank you for your cooperation and support of our troops."_

The words taper off as the message rings loud and clear. A sign from God above could have been no clearer, in fact. I look up from the official document and catch the unwavering stare of the man I know nothing about, not even his name, and come to realize I have been called upon to provide house and home to a complete stranger. He smiles a little. A complacent smirk plays upon his full lips like deft fingers chasing piano keys.

The letter falls from my slack fingers and sways slowly into the old floorboards.

Oh dear indeed.

* * *

Footnotes: Don't worry. Joe won't always be so rude.


	2. Of Hearsay and Stalemates

_Author's Note_: Thank you to chocolate-rum and britt who reviewed the last chapter. I appreciate it!

disclaimer - I own nothing of Band of Brothers and no disrespect is intended toward the men of Easy Company. This is merely fiction and is based on the fictional portrayal of Joe Liebgott.

* * *

The action of utmost importance as of this moment, as I stare at that corpse of a letter lying at my feet, is getting tea. Tea is calming and familiar. Tea will allow me to think properly in a time such as this one. The pest may wait; he will not die on his feet if he must linger a little longer in the waking world.

My feet shuffle anxiously and leave little pitter-patters of cold footprints upon the dusty floorboards as they cross the length of the small kitchen. A few creaks, old groans that feel better suited for men on their death beds, rise out of the nailed-down wood.

If only I were to keep more than a little whisky in the house, for when my father arrives _impromptu_ on my doorstep and requires something a little stronger than herb-steeped water. A long trip, he always remarks as I pour him a small glass. Yes, it is always a long trip, I'd like to say, but there is no use in suppressing demons that possess more will and obstinacy than I ever could in the whole of my life.

"Sir, would you care for a glass of whisky?"

He peers up at me as if through watered-down glass. The kind of careful consideration that you may find on a rainy day such as this, through a shopkeeper's window, addressing all the merchandise and finding that you are not at all impressed with the stock. "Only if you stop calling me sir."

I reach into a cupboard, pulling out the smallest glass I own. It is a slight-figured, chipped white tea cup, the cheapest sort of china that Britain, a civilization practically founded on drinking staggering amounts of tea, can stand to make. "Then what might I call you?"

"Whatever the fuck you like," he says, and the profanity scrapes down my ears. Nails on the proverbial chalkboard, if you will. "As long as it isn't sir."

"The letter names you as Joseph Liebgott," I say, as I set the china before him.

His arms are crossed. There is no mistaking his line of defense. "Is that so?"

He regards it for a moment, mislead by the presentation which is normally associated with the sort of drink he is so adamantly opposed to, but then the scent of sickly sweet whiskey wafts into the air. Even I can smell it. And I can be assured that he has too as he brings the rim of the cup to his lips and downs the entire contents.

This is my cue to fetch the rest of the bottle. My father may bring his own drink when he comes, and it is never in any way astonishing when he does; besides, it may ease my pest's sour mood and soften his intentions, if only a little bit.

"Perhaps I may call you by your christening," I offer gently. The tea pot begins screaming for release behind me. "Joseph."

There is no derisive remark for this spoken decision, not a hint of a scathing or otherwise disapproving look in his eye when I arrive at the table with the hushed pot. He is simply sitting there, warmed by the liquid pleasure sliding through his tightly wound veins. I can see them release their constriction, loosen with the set in of the hard drink, and his eyes are liquid glass. They remind me of the church windows, the panes outlined in wrought iron and within there are pools of brilliant color. Depicting pictures of long-suffering, of the beauty of the soul, of saints and below them the plight of sinners.

In Joseph's eyes, there is only the portrait of contentment imagined in the color of warm earth.

We are both silent as we sit uneasily in each other's unwanted presence. I am a convenience, a rather inconvenient one of standard. He is a novelty that has no promise of acclimation. In the few moments that he has claimed my house as his own, he has tracked mud into my dusty, rundown kitchen, blemished my pure, white walls with his blasphemy and ill-attitude toward the world and has nearly drained the bottle of whisky that I set before him for his free use. I have only seen more consumption of alcohol in one sitting, and in less time at that, from my father.

I sip my tea, feeling the tension begin to peel away from my nerves. But still they tremble.

What will the women of Aldbourne think of me now? A seamstress turned innkeeper. Or will they declare me a whore? Housing a yank, and a handsome, if not troublesome one at that. It will be mistaken for different circumstances. There is no masking that truth.

Oh, if that postman does not take his gossip to the streets, they may never know. But it is a small place, Aldbourne, and there is no room for secrecy.

It will be the talk of the town within the hour and my spotless reputation shall be dragged on the heels of the mother hens and the gossip hounds through the rain-slicked mud. Until there is something new to discuss, something new into which they can stick their probing noses where they certainly do not belong.

Joseph is still staring at me, his eyes narrowed, his bottom lip caught within a cage of pensive teeth.

* * *

It is an event to be celebrated and sanctified by God when I am finally rid of my vexing new housemate. If only for the remainder of the day.

The sun has escaped her curtain of cloud as he charges through a large puddle of mud gathering near the entrance to the house. Some of the spray finds the petticoat of my dress. There is no use in mentioning the damage his lack of refinement in walking has caused to my bare legs, my age-worn shoes and the smoothed floor that I have only just finished polishing. I am fairly certain it is out of spite that I find myself dripping with dirt-drenched rainwater.

A wistful sort of sigh escapes me as I regard the new mess and I cannot help but think of the usefulness of a very thickly woven doormat. It will have to wait, such a project, for the silk to be finished first.

The hours past this morning and following supper the night before were not spent in each other's company.

After he was made comfortable by the whisky, I left him to steal a bit of rest at the table while I fixed him a place to call his own in the attic. An old cot that I used to sleep in when I was a little girl still waited there for me, looking forlorn in its uselessness as I ascended the steps and found the ancient room just as I left it with a bundle of sheets and wool blankets tucked into my arms. A fine coat of dust sprinkled the place in a way that made it seem like an old photograph. A snapshot into the past.

I had not heard him come in. But as I had chased away some of the dust off the end table situated at the side of the bed, wiping it away with the hem of my nightdress for good measure, I felt the presence of his shadow crawling over my back. He had laughed when I swiveled on my bare feet like a wheel set in motion and shrieked, my hand flying to my breast in a fit of panic.

_Demon! _I wanted to shout at him and chase him from the house with a broom flying at his legs, but I saw no use in casting out a man who had nowhere else to go in the world. I can only hope that, as time goes on, we can finda way to invite tolerance into our lives, since it will be a shared life from now on. The recurring thought sends a trill of dread through me even now as I recall the arrival of it the next day. _A shared life. _

_We are too different!_ my conscience screamed for me to listen, but I had brushed her aside and began making the bed.

"Just put the sheet on there," he orders in the midst of a yawn, shooing me away as I make to fluff the pillow. "Thanks, lady."

It had been the first thank you I'd ever heard from him. I made a note to notch the event of such a miracle in my bedpost, for the wicked part of me knew it would be the last. "Alice," I retort.

He already flopped upon the mattress when I declared my name to him, standing there, out of place, while he shifted into the fresh linens to find a comfortable spot. With his arms bent into triangles behind his head, weaving with his thick dark hair, and his long legs sprawled out in lovely disarray over the bed, he had cracked open one eye and frowned.

"What's that you said?" He challenged brusquely.

"My name," I clarified. "It is Alice."

"Sure it is," he said, and the conversation had been over.

For the duration of the morning and well into the afternoon, the house returned to its commonplace stillness, with only the rustle of fragile silk to interrupt the blessed silence. Calm and the overall beautiful sensation of normalcy crawled over me in those gentle hours for a stay. It was a transient one I knew for the man upstairs, nestled into the bed of my childhood, could not sleep forever.

I enjoyed what solitude I could steal from the advantage of his exhaustion. Soon, I would be making supper. I would climb the short flight of stairs to find him tousled in the midst of the sheets, his head draped in dreams and his lovely face would be caught within the mind's dewy web of somnolence. Perhaps it will be the only time I do not see him frowning or scowling or staring at me as if I were some strange conundrum that he cannot seem to fathom.

The maternal instincts tucked away inside of me for later wish so very ardently to scold him for making such lines in his face. It is such a clear, striking countenance that the premature arrival of age's deep lines would be the most terrible tragedy of wasted beauty. But I know better and I know my place.

I waited for the first signs of dusk outside my window to abandon the dress, then set to searching through the recently stocked pantry to make supper. The raiment is stashed away for later, to be taken up again after the soldier returns to bed or, at the very least, the dishes are cleared.

Though I would prefer not being exposed to his watching me so intently while I sewed, it would also not do to forget my upbringing and resort to insolence in sending him away. I have no books other than a copy of the dictionary and the volume which holds erect the leg of my rickety old table, no paper on which to write, no objects of leisure to speak of at all. The very least I could offer was a place at the table to pass the time.

As I climbed the stairs after preparing and finishing supper, I engraved into my memory to save a few shillings for the bookstore down the lane. It still remains there, waiting for the proper means to be fulfilled.

"Joseph," I had called into the quickly diminishing light, and the shadows flitted to and fro as I upset the quietude of the attic. There are not many places for them to hide; the attic is practically empty exempting the bed, a tub for washing, the end table and a chest full of personal effects that I keep locked away from prying hands and eyes.

I had neared the bed. He was still asleep, though the picture of nonchalant ease was replaced with a child-like posture as he law curled in on himself, hugging the pillow to his disheveled head. I stifled a warm chuckle with both hands at the picture perfect sight. It would be such a sad thought to wake him, but he wouldn't go hungry either. Not under _this_ roof.

"Joseph, dear boy," I whispered into the shell of his ear, hoping it would be absorbed under such a deeply woven spell. "Won't you come down and have something to eat?"

His eyes fluttered open, like butterfly wings stretching the aches out of their muscles after a long flight. For a moment, the loveliness of his borrowed peace remained, but it was chased away as wakefulness settled in and that recurring frown returned to its rightful place. He looked around for a moment, as if for a clock.

"It's seven thirty, if you were at all wondering," I answered for him, and the wanderer's sort of look to him faded. "Are you hungry?"

"Do you even have to ask?" He looked up at me, blinking a little erratically as his eyes adjusted to the new moonlight and the sight of me standing at his bedside. The entire right half of his face was quirked upward in an all-encompassing smirk.

"I will take that as a yes, then." I turned on my heel and listened for the telling creak of the bed that signaled his following me.

When I heard only the complete lack of noise instead, no moving limbs or feet or anything at all, I peered over my shoulder at him and found him watching the walls. As if they'd move if he willed them to.

"Well?" I pressed gently, and he looked over at me, startled a little by the sound of my voice.

At last, he found his legs and followed me down the winding staircase. When he reached bottom of the steps, I met him with the chair pulled back for him and a bowl of thin cabbage soup ready on the table. A pitcher of water was placed as the epicenter of the table settings and a batch of flowers that I picked from an obliging meadow some days before were beginning to wilt in their vase. Chipped china served as drinking glasses.

"You sure aren't well off as some people, are you?" He had commented, but sat down anyway, adjacent to my situation, and began eating what had been put in front of him. It was the army mentality, I can only guess, that you eat what you are given or you go hungry. No exceptions.

I was, and still am, beginning to see that not everything that comes out of his mouth is intended to inflict injury on my pride or reject my way of life. It is simple conjecture. A way of marking his place in the world, perhaps. I have yet to decode him, this walking riddle.

"Rationing is quite hard on all of us," I answered, and I was surprised to find myself less wounded by the assault on my quality of living than I thought I would be. "Common things like sugar, coffee and dresses have become a luxury instead of an entitlement. I can only assume that many small places such as Aldbourne have been affected by the change in Britain's manufacturing priorities for the war."

He caught a dribble of thin broth that trickled down his chin with his sleeve. Inwardly, where I kept my book of manners lest I should forget them, I winced, but let it pass as I hoped to educate him on proper conduct if I could. Later, when he was more settled in.

"Opinionated little thing, ain't ya?"

"There is nothing wrong with women having opinions."

The look in his eyes told me he knew the origins of such defensive rebuttal very well indeed. As if he recited the same sort of sentence, if not verbatim, himself many times before, altered only by his own position in life. Altered _how _I could never know, not unless he told me. "Never said it wasn't."

The onslaught of silence waged over our heads. I sipped delicately and he slurped. Though the both of us sat together physically, the contrast of our stature was as if we were standing in two different worlds. In ways, it was rather fascinating. In others, it was unsettling. I could only assume, as I began to think on it a little longer and the lack of conversation between us drifted onward toward the cessation of the meal, that he felt the same.

"I do apologize for not having better food available," I observed conversationally, dipping the old wooden spoon into the broth, searching for more cabbage. There had been none to be found. "If I would have known you were to arrive a little sooner, perhaps I would have put aside a little extra money."

The table shuddered as his spoon was thrown down on the pitted old surface and his hands, constricted into fists, followed suit. He looked quite annoyed as we met each other's eyes, his brimming over with fire and my own cool and calm as ice. "_Look, _lady, I'm not anymore fucking thrilled about me being here than you are-"

"Don't be so quick to assume, Joseph, that you know my intentions," I replied, putting into effect a careful effort to assuage his ruffled temper. "I meant only that I am sorry for not having better accommodations for you. I have never been a soldier, nor have I known one, but I can only imagine that it is hard."

"You're right," he spat, kicking the chair back as he stood to leave. "You have no _fucking_ clue."

And that was the last I saw or heard of him until the following day, when the sun came up bright and the sky, for once, reigned clear over the lush green countryside. Light reflected off the grass like a thousand emerald stones jutting out of the skin of the earth. It was a beautiful morning.

Joseph didn't stay for breakfast.

The house is clear of all movement and disruption when I sit down at the table in the early gray light. A rag is in my hands, perforated with holes from overuse, and I am just about to mop away the remnants of the waterlogged dirt that is beginning to cake to my petticoat and bare legs when there is a knock at the door.

I look up, surprised at the prospect of a guest at such an hour. It is too early for the postman's daily visit and surely it is not Joseph, for he has left for the day to begin training.

I hurry to wipe, at the very least, my legs and discard the rag absently on the table. As I approach the door, through the gauzy curtain I can see the shape of two women standing behind the partition. From the way their heads move animatedly, headdresses flouncing wildly with the stilted motions, I can see that they are conversing quite heatedly.

The door opens and whatever they have been discussing is immediately stashed away for later. Judging by the swiftness with which they calm, something in my conscience tells me they have been talking about me.

Georgiana Reid and Margaret Hale…two of the town's most infamous mother hens. Among their many talents and pastimes, they are also self-proclaimed matchmakers, and my heart sinks a little as I invite them in. Perhaps they are here for the same dreaded reason I had been dwelling on yesterday. They mean to reprimand me.

They chatter amongst themselves and to me arbitrarily as I set the pot to boil and collect the fixings for morning tea. The biscuits are hard and stale and there is no butter; an unopened jar of marmalade from London, a present from my father two months prior, sits in the back of my pantry and I resort to using that instead.

"Oh, my dear Alice," Mrs. Hale exhales most dramatically, her hand fluttering about her chest. "I have heard that you are housing a _yank_!"

"And a bad mannered one at that they say," Mrs. Reid adds deftly.

"Where on earth did you gather that information?" The former asks.

"From Earl of course! He heard the man himself!" Came the answer. Mrs. Reid leans in, as if to avoid letting me hear, and remarks, "spouting off profanities in the Gray household? It would not do for Alfred. He'd have the boy thrown out for sure."

"I doubt he would have stood for such gossip regarding his only daughter either," I say as I cut through the banter between the women and set a tray of biscuits and orange marmalade out for them to eat. They each take one simultaneously, but it is a reactive motion, for their fires are stoked by my audacious statement. I anticipated no less from the pair of them.

"Tush!" Mrs. Hale hisses. "He would be glad that we are looking after you so carefully, dear girl! You know, there is talking about town that the once respected house of Gray has now been turned into a brothel for the yanks! It's terrible, my girl, just terrible."

"We suggest that you have him removed at once before your reputation is sullied for good!" Mrs. Reid finishes the thought, as she always seems to do, and smears her biscuit with the sweet spread.

"Then it is well for me that you are not _demanding _such an impossible notion," I reply.

The smell of black tea permeates the entire room, swathing the gray old house in a warming mantle of contentment. I mourn having to share such serenity with these two rumormongers nipping at my heels, dictating which current of fate I should set for my life at every turn that does not appeal to their natures.

"Whatever do you mean, Alice?"

"Surely you don't mean to say you are going to _keep _him here?"

I consider both of them, the downward turn of their tortured expressions, the desperation that flashes in their eyes. "Surely I do. The poor man has nowhere else to go. Aldbourne is not his home and it would do him well to have a little hospitality to ease his stay."

They try to deter me from this course of action. But their words are in vain, for I made my decision the moment he left that house, leaving a sea-foam spray of mud and disgust in his wake. He shall stay and no amount of heckling or hearsay will change my mind.

The pair of them leave at the strike of ten, both equally dissatisfied. All I can think of as I sit down to work on the silk wedding raiment is the heartrending waste of opening my good marmalade for such an unpleasant visit.

* * *

The day wears on with no more interruption from the outside world. Behind the walls of my sanctuary, I sit and toil over my work, reveling in the lack of shrill, disapproving voices echoing off the furniture and boring into my head as if they think it will sway me. Convert me to the religion of their petty gossip. For such gentle-hearted women, their methods are unpracticed and come across as insensitive and lacking in regard for the matter of decency completely.

Every stitch brings me closer to the end of the day, when I will hope to hear a gentle knock at the door and allow my house guest inside. No relentless pounding as if he means to beat it down into the receding puddles or send me reeling into a fit of surrender.

Perhaps the sores of yesterday's misunderstanding will be healed for the both of us by the day's occupation of body and mind. Or, if misfortune seeks to maim our struggling acquiescence to each other's presence under one roof, he will have heard the news of his stay traveling through the town's fast-moving gossip stream. There is no knowing as of yet if that will drive him over the edge or affect him at all. The man is certainly a blank page in my mind waiting to be filled with answers. What is he like besides handsome and tempestuous as a summer storm?

Asking forthrightly should only risk summoning his ire. Learning in obscurity, I think, will be the only option that I have available to me in this particular circumstance. It is no matter. Sooner or later, he will be revealed to me somehow.

I have at last finished the construction of the first sleeve when the door swings open. Panic makes my hands jerk and the sleeve is torn from its new stitches completely. Joseph is standing in the minute entryway nursing a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Not only have I ruined the greater half of the day's progress, but now my house is beginning to take on the smell of a London pub. Frustration wells up in me and I feel as if I will burst into tears from it all, but I bite my lip hard to keep them at bay. Weeping and fainting in the societies past never seemed to elevate the fragile status of women in man's eyes.

He pinches the middle of his cigarette and his cheeks sink into his mouth as he inhales deeply. The hollows of his face are rendered even darker by the shadows of the single candle that stands in the middle of the table, the wick dancing in a ring of fire. Wax dribbles down the sides. Joseph's eyes glimmer in the gold light and he looks almost savage as he exhales a thick billow of smoke from behind his gently sloping lips.

Not a word is exchanged between us. Only meaningful glances. I look at him and he looks at me. He does not bother to veil the mild aversion in the deep, dark depths of his gaze and I do not wish to hide my censure of his ruining a hard day's work with his blatant lack of even the simplest forms of etiquette.

In reaction to my wordless criticism, he plucks the cigarette from his mouth as one would a flower, so easily, so casually, and stubs it on the table. Sparks of fire and little waves of ash fly up from the motion and I cannot help but stare unabashedly at such a brazen act of defiance. Could any man be so intent on proving his stubbornness and antagonism of nature as to resort to destroying furniture?

Apparently he can. And he does. He steals an apple out of his pocket and noisily climbs the stairs.

The moment he leaves the room, a powerful gust of wind comes dashing through the open room. The candle is snuffed out and the door slams shut.

I am left in darkness with the remains of a ruined day of labor.

* * *

Footnotes: Alice's father will make an appearance later in the story. I won't say when, but I will say that he does, in fact, become involved some way or another.


	3. The Origin of Please

_Author's Notes: _Thank you so very much to chocolate-rum and loveonspeeddial for their reviews! They are most appreciated. I do hope this isn't too long or too boring, but I will try my best to keep things interesting.

disclaimer - I own nothing of Band of Brothers and no disrespect is intended toward the men of Easy Company. This is merely fiction and is based on the fictional portrayal of Joe Liebgott.

* * *

Early October;;

* * *

On the morning marking the last day of September, I sit in quiet at the table, eyes fixed on the new project I have been pursuing as of late. The silk is carefully situated in the wardrobe of my room, where it has waited for a week now in preparation for travel by train.

I am to expect the man who ordered the raiment not a month before in the afternoon. Perhaps earlier, if his schedule allows it, and in the meantime I have kept myself busy with another patron's requisition.

It is becoming colder as the spell of autumn grows deeper. In the early morning and for an hour into the late night I keep the wood stove burning in an endeavor to ward off the chill from entering the house. Joseph has looked rather sallow lately when I let him inside and the quiet notes of a shiver he ever wishes to contain are unable to escape me.

It is ample weather for sickness, but wood is not the most economical of products with even more everyday items being overly priced by rations. I try to keep the stove burning with little odds and ends of twigs and small branches I can take from the bare tree in my courtyard, but there is only so much fuel in wisps of bark and crackled, dead leaves. They can only afford to give a little heat, but I take what it may spare.

At last, the hours of the bitterest cold are wasted and I smother the fire in the stove. The house is warm, not a window open, and only a small amount of the heat escapes through the cracks in the door and underneath the floorboards. Still, my hands shake with a deep set chill that pools somewhere in the long caverns of my bones and only after a cup of tea and a shawl being wrapped around my shoulders, I am able to rid myself of the frozen scourge completely.

By the time the clock strikes ten, a knock at the door stirs me from my toils and I look up. A shadow stands outside the gossamer curtain.

I store the woolen coat away and try to restore my appearance to some semblance of order. They are ungainly, my gaunt features and shapeless clothes, but they are all I have to offer to maintain my reputation as a docile country seamstress. There is no exchanging them, even for the sake of rich company. I try to make do with what I have and pinch my cheeks to reanimate the dormant sort of pallor there.

When I reach the door, one more knock ensues before I draw it open and allow the man inside. Just as I expected, the Mr. Chamberlin of London enters, recalling his manners and removing his hat as he steps into the nearly nonexistent foyer.

"Goodness, girl, it is frightfully drafty in here," he remarks gently as I seal the door shut behind him. "Do you not suffer from the chill?"

"Only a little, sir, but it is not as bad as it may seem," I reply, and gesture to the uncluttered table. There is not a trace of the work that has been done there in the years that have passed, only ghosts of practice that hover over my head. They wait to repossess my hands with the ache of repetitive drudgery and weariness that envelopes the very soul sheltered within. Wait for my guest to leave and their time to come again when they may reclaim their moving territory. "Won't you sit? I shall make some tea. You look chilled to the bone yourself."

"Tea would be wonderful, dear girl," he smiles, the expression casting such gentle molds of radiance into the colorless features and it crinkles around his dark eyes.

The water is still quite hot from the pot I made not an hour before his arrival and so I pour only one cup for him. He asks, as I sit down before him, why I am not having any, and I assure him I have already had enough for now.

His surroundings withhold no disparaging detail of the woman that resides here and her daily battle with penury, and so he does not bother to risk insulting my livelihood by asking for milk or sugar. He knows there is none just by looking at me, at the kitchen itself. There are not even biscuits, which even the poorest of women can bake for their families, but I must buy mine for I always succeed in burning every batch I attempt to make by hand.

"I thank you for your hospitality, Miss Gray," he says after a few long moments in silence, setting the empty china aside. "But I believe I have come here on business and therefore have arranged a schedule allowing only a little time to spend in leisure. My wife to be, you must understand, is impatient in her youth. We marry this coming week before I must be away on an occupational trip to France. She understands, but is no less adamant to be married before I leave."

"Then I will be glad to fetch it for you," I reply, and even as I excuse myself to acquire the carefully packed away silk, I see his hand delve hastily into his pocketbook. In one hand he holds a watch which he inspects with furrowed brows and in the other a pouch.

I return with the finished raiment and he admires it for a moment before awarding me with compensation and the customary farewell.

As he leaves, the weight of the money feels heavy in my hand. There is not enough for books. Only for food.

* * *

It has been weeks since we last spoke to one another. Joseph and I, that is.

We are both too invested in our own selfish means of stubbornness to give way for clemency between us, so it is likely that this will be the state of things until he is deported from Aldbourne entirely. If only I had kept to myself my own foolish comments, perhaps we might have lived peacefully together, or even take to nurturing what would soon become a very fine friendship.

But there is no such hope for armistice here. The house is a no man's land and neither he nor I will take the risk of crossing it.

September drifts onward until it reaches the edge of October. The weather grows colder, warmth spread too thin as summer dies in the clutches of the newfound chill, and I begin taking out old pea coats fashioned from retired blankets in order to sew wool lining into inside of the cloth. I set one aside even for Joseph and every hope I have of reconciliation and winning his favor are stored in the little acts of kindness I wish to show him.

There is still no money for proper food, but as every day brought the coat ever closer to being finished, it brought in its trail the hope to see my new patron before the fifteenth of this very month. It is only the fifth and there is still much work to be done before the light draws me into the end of the tunnel.

The sound of his footsteps wind downward toward me as he descends the stairs. It is nearly full dawn and the light is still gray as the sun struggles out of her nocturnal shrouds to find the grassy knolls. Joseph arrives in the dimly lit kitchen, the pale morning glow like the color of ashes. A spare cigarette is already tucked behind his ear as he still nurses the one shaped into the corner of his mouth.

The smell of smoke permeates the room and chokes my lungs; I cough with the unsavory curl of burning nicotine unfurling in my chest and he doesn't seem to take heed of the sound, if he hears it at all. Out of fear of upsetting him further, I have not yet asked him to refrain from practicing such vile habits in the house, and there is little chance of there ever being a good time to make such a dire request. I wonder, fleetingly, if I should simply relent and make the appeal anyway to his better nature; it will make me no less loathsome in his eyes than I already am.

He's sifting through the meager cabinets and I wait, anticipation keeping my ears peeled for his voice, for him to demand the location of whatever it is he is searching for. In the meantime, I pull the needle through the thick fabric of a coat I have long since come close to finishing for a little girl residing in nearby Littlecote.

I attempt my hardest not to jump as he goes rifling through the cabinetry, slamming doors and cursing under his breath as his determination to be the most pigheaded man in existence continues to be in vain. If only he would ask, I would not deny him. Even if he resorted to cursing and scowling and being altogether unpleasant going about it as he usually does.

"Jesus _Christ_," he calls to the ceiling, his raspy voice supplicating to heaven above him. "Where the fuck can a guy get a cup of tea around here?"

"I have been told by a most reliable source that you are not at all fond of tea," I reply, my eyes still following the metrical movements of my hands. "In fact, if you should ever drink it, your reputation as a virile man would be ruined altogether."

He ignores me and pulls his bottom lip between his teeth in a fit of indignation. Silence. Slow surrender. "You don't keep coffee in the house. I'd rather fucking drink hot gasoline, but I'm sure you've got none of that around here either."

"Coffee is expensive. I don't believe even you can afford it." I reply quietly and ignore his biting remark, still not getting up to fulfill his reluctantly made request. It betrays everything which defines who he is, asking not only a _woman, _but an English woman, to help him find something and I want to revel in it for just a few moments. He has time before he must leave.

"Do I gotta fucking _beg_?"

"If you say please, then perhaps I will be tempted to show you."

"No, you'll _tell_ me," he insists. "I'm a big boy. I think I can handle getting it for myself."

I make no indication of abandoning my post at the table. He sighs and shuffles his feet. Like a bull preparing to charge. "_Fine. _Have it your way then. _Fuck_," he laces the word with the undercurrent of his breath. "_Please _show me where the tea is so I can be on my merry fucking way."

It is not perfect, his entreaty, as within its delivery lies unwillingness and agitation in the form of profanity. But he has uttered please for the first time in the few weeks since I have met him and this is cause enough for praise and reward. The bull, perhaps, cannot be tamed but he can be calmed for a time. Even if only for an instant, it is enough.

I forsake the nearly finished coat and the array of simple black buttons lying in scattered clusters on the table. He stays put as I kneel beside the old iron-wrought stove and retrieve a jar of tea bags from a small stash in the back of the cupboard, behind a front of chipped tea cups and stained old china.

I hand him both the jar and a cup. He takes them from my hands and utters a small thank you, but it is begrudging, there is no meaning in the pretense of gratitude.

"Do you know how to make it properly?" I ask.

"Would I be standing here like an idiot if I did?" He retorts, and I recognize the insolence in the rhetorical inquiry, but do not address it directly.

I merely let it fly over my head and miss its target completely, passing him to fetch a kettle full of water outside. He remains behind, guarding the kitchen as if from unseen demons, and when I return he is smoking the cigarette he'd had placed behind his ear when he came downstairs not ten minutes before.

He blows feathery designs of breath-laced smoke into the air and I wave my hand before my face to clear the thick white pall from my eyes. Once I can inhale properly again, I proceed to light the stove-top with a match and set the kettle on top to boil.

I gesture to the tea bags. "Place two of these in one pot," I pause to show him the china I had available for his use and he hums his understanding in the key of complete indifference. "When the kettle starts to shriek, blow out the flame underneath and pour the boiling water into the porcelain. Let it steep for a few minutes and you have a cup of English breakfast tea."

His brow rises and falls with a quickly passing caustic smile. "Fucking mazel tov to me, huh?" he declares, and takes in a long draught of nicotine. I can only hope the smoke does not find and ultimately infiltrate the silk. The stains should never come out, nor the awful scent.

The kettle begins to tremble and scream and he is quick to fetch it from its piercing exhibition of despair. Just as he had been instructed to do, he pours the water into the squat little vessel containing the tea bags and extinguishes the flame.

From the corner of my eye, I watch him traipse the kitchen, back and forth as he goes about his business quietly, and I cannot help but realize how utterly beautiful he is when he moves. Like watching Ares in the fluid form of grace in motion. Forged from animal instinct and hair-trigger temper, but not without its own inhuman form of self-reliance and poise.

He sets the pot on the table and pulls back a chair for him to sit. "You want some?"

"I would, yes," I reply, and he steals away, from the bare cabinetry, another cup for me. "Thank you, Joseph."

His mouth twists critically as the formality of his name reaches out to him from across the table. "Joe."

"Pardon?"

"The boys call me Joe," he clarifies, and his face contorts into repulsion as he takes his first taste of the drink. "Only my ma calls me Joseph. Got any sugar for this shit?"

"I'm afraid not," I answer, still stitching buttons. They are sewn into the bare fabric that follows the seam beneath the pressed lapels and they will be the last effects of the winter coat. Soon, before the close of the coming week, I will be done with this new project. I can hardly wait for the near-blinding light of conclusion. "The last of the sugar is spent."

"_Goddamnit_," he hisses, curling his lips into something like a snarl, but he finishes his portion in spite of the offensive taste.

For the warmth, perhaps, a shield against the bitter cold that lies before him on the threshold that awaits him outside the door.

And upon the strike of six, he leaves the house, dropping his cigarette in an iced over puddle somewhere in the courtyard.

I look up from the coat I am working on in time to see him slam the front gate behind him, looking like a piece of fallen heaven in flesh shedding the newborn sunlight.

"Goodbye then," I whisper into the walls, as if to save the belated farewell for later. "_Joe."_

* * *

The wraith of night breathes in the last swells of day.

Clouds that have been pacing the far horizons on every side, arriving from every corner of the world, begin to invade the sky and obscure the sharp clarity of fresh darkness with their threat of a winter tempest. The air trembles with the resonation of such a menace. There are no birds to pacify the trilling thrum that carries on the wind. Wood stoves burn inside of the houses on my lane, chimneys sending forth whorls of grey smoke that disappear once they feel the first bite of the cold air.

It is late now. My wrists and fingers have at least ceased their violent throbbing from taxation of overwork and I have been lounging in the hibernating garden since the break of dusk. The little girl's wool coat remains in its state of intentional abandon on the surface of the table, away from Joe's chosen spot that serves as his makeshift ashtray. Her father makes to return to his station in London after a short leave. I must send it to her soon, before she too disappears in the slinking shadow of war.

The thought of Joe causes me to again inspect the drowsy little lane. There are no footsteps, there is no sound at all except for the wind that rustles through the dead trees, that finds comfort in its eternal wanderings. When he did not come home by dusk, his usual hour of reappearance, I did not dwell on it for too long. But as seven o' clock passed, and eight and nine, the worry gnawed a little deeper into my conscience. Where in the devil is that thoughtless boy?

Everywhere around me, the air seems to rattle, as if it is only a string being plucked by the budding frost. It sticks to the windows and paints into them the pale face of winter. I tug my thick shawl a little tighter to my chest and watch my breath rise into the breeze as a quickly withering mist. It disappears and I am left alone again. The house seems to snore happily behind me in its unbroken doze. No lights expel the gloom and the rooms are only occupied by the unassuming and vacant furniture.

Still, no footsteps. Still, not a sound.

Snow begins to fall. I am not at all astonished by its advent, only that it has come so early in the season, for by rights this cold storm should not have come until the end of the month. It does not seem to care for my disapproval, of its premature onset of winter, only that it has been told to fall. And it does.

Only moments after the snow arrives, so does the first sound of footsteps coming down the lane.

* * *

It is not my place to judge him and I intend not to.

But as he stumbles toward me, his skin and blood merged with the glistening of what my imagination can only conjecture is blood, my mind cannot help but shuffle question marks and common phrases together in the form of inquiries. _Drunk _crosses the forefront of meditation, as does _fight _and _blood. _

The only question that proves coherent amidst the jumbled mess of letters and punctuation falls from my mouth in a rush. "Joe, what has happened to you?"

He plunges into my arms and I nearly topple over myself from the force of his body plummeting into mine. Scarlet sinks into my shawl and the clothes beneath it. Somewhere, in the back of my skull where brain begins to end and my innermost person sits before a mirror, talking to herself, I hear the grumbling erupt as he pants into my shoulder. The smell of alcohol is strong on his breath and radiates from the pores of his unbuttoned jacket.

_I suppose I need not tell you that you will have to fix all of this…his uniform, this mess of blood, and of course it stands without mentioning, playing nurse for a terrible aftermath tomorrow. If the rabid dog will even let him near you. _

I steady him and try to piece him back together into an upright position. Even scowling, darkly pensive Joe sitting at the table drumming his fingertips against the pitted wood sounds more pleasant than Joe coming undone in the middle of a snowy night. Joe captured by the strengthening cold which promises to lull him into hypothermia. There's blood all over the place and I can't be certain of the source; I can't even be sure of where I am in this fickle sea of red. Of how much damage has been inflicted on his svelte figure that seems fragile on the surface, but feels so much more powerful in the quivering tendons and muscles that lie beneath the misleading stretch of skin.

My hands rest upon the tapered planes of his cheekbones. They feel soft beneath my palms. "Joe," I try, searching his black eyes for even a fleeting image of the familiar man that stows himself away in my attic. "Joe, look at me darling. Are you all right? What happened?"

He tears himself away once he realizes whose voice it is that's penetrating the depths of the haze. His black eyes flash, the only proof that they are not a part of the night itself. "Get off me," he spits at my feet and clumsily wipes away the residue with his sleeve. "This ain't none of your _fucking_ business."

I try to help him toward the house, but he shoves my endeavors away from him. "Leave me the hell alone, would ya lady?"

Resigned to my fate as a silhouette to the drunken corpse of a man that clamors through the empty streets of Aldbourne, I follow quietly. Not a mutter, not a vestige of sound to escape from the confinement of my tightly closed mouth. He, however, is my opposite in every way. Curses spill into the snow, turning it red and gray with his blood and shadow brimming over the footprints he leaves behind. I am only present to make certain that he does not become prey to an unhappy accident.

One by one, we enter the warm house, my quiet form trailing behind him, and I can almost hear it waking from its drowsy contentment. I can almost see the eyes of the window cracking open as I strike a match and light a few candles to illuminate the way upstairs. Joe is already tripping over every step. He is too utterly consumed by the alcohol to have the presence of mind to even know what a candle is.

I pursue his trail of dripping scarlet up the winding staircase and arrive at the top to find him gasping for air as he lies on the clean white linens. They are pure no longer, for they bear the mark of his body on them in streaks and little rivers of his blood. He does not seem to hear me and I am spared of his belligerence, if only for a moment.

His eyes are closed, one forced shut with swelling, and his nose is red and engorged, turning purple-blue with spreading bruises. There is more blood that filters down the front of his uniform, but only his face has borne the brunt of the maiming, and I can't help but wonder who has done this to him as I set the candle down on the end table, feeling my brow pinch together with worry. Before I can even consciously consider the danger of what I am doing, I outstretch my hand to brush a wayward piece of hair from his pale white forehead. His breath hitches and his good eye flies open.

"The hell are you doing up here?" He shouts, his voice filling up the room and making it cower in fear at his ferocity. Despite his weakness and drunkenness, he manages to return to his feet, if not a little unevenly. "I thought I told you to leave me alone!"

"You did," I reply mildly. "But Joe, you need my help. At least allow me to clean you up-"

"No," he commands. "_Get out."_

For a moment , we simply stare at one another. I take in his broken countenance and must smother every female instinct in me to rush over to him and wash every trace of gore from his lovely features. But the wild look in his eyes deters these instincts and evokes those of survival instead. "As you wish."

He has backed himself into a corner, a wounded animal with nowhere else to turn and in his confusion he finds himself trapped. All he has left is his ability to daunt his soft-eyed predator with sheer size. It is no use; he is reduced to a mere human being, no giant, no Ares here. Simply Joseph Liebgott who is much too skinny and aggressive for his own good.

I return to my place. The pushed back chair that has stayed empty in my long absence. There, I wait. Wait for silence in the room upstairs, wait for courage to summon me back to him and calm to soften his resolve. His injury is not serious, but everything in me screams to take care of him. To convince him that I am not the enemy. That I am here to help him if he should ever need me.

The clock strikes five. Outside the window, a white dawn begins to emerge from beneath the wings of weary night. The stars are snuffed out like candles of the heavens and the moon sinks away into the void. It recalls to memory how tired I am as morning crescendos into a climax of first light and brilliant blue sky.

My entire body feels as if it sags beneath the weight of fatigue, but I must not yield to rest until I know Joe is all right. I listen hard. There is no movement, no sign of life coming from beyond those stairs, and so I deem it safe to venture there, bringing fresh bed clothes with me.

The first step inside is the hardest. Joe has proved that there is such rage in him that cannot be fathomed by human intellect. He is beyond understanding in some ways, and yet so simple to predict in others. For now, he is curled up somewhere, sleeping, but when I look at the bed, I do not find him there. The candle still burns, shedding its light over the room, but it sheds no light on Joe's quiescent figure.

My mind reels backward and recalls that, when I left him, he had been in the corner, where the wall juts out just enough for privacy, and behind which I had long since placed a washing tub for bathing. He can be nowhere else. He must be there.

It is needless to say that this is where I discover him, his limbs spread far out from him as his body remains locked inside the shape of his makeshift bed. His arms hang over the lip of the tub, his legs curled over the end of it.

I stifle a small bud of laughter that struggles to bloom within such frail tranquility. If even a sound that is not softer than a measured footstep finds its way into the air, it will break, and Joe will be the monstrous, blood-soaked drunk again.

I kneel at the side of the tub and carefully drape a blanket over his body. At once, I notice that he had been shivering, but as the warmth collects beneath the coverlet, the trembling allays and he is as still and beautiful as the gentle heat weaving through a mild summer's day.

Softly, I catch a wild lock of hair and brush it back from his forehead. He does not stir, even as a beam of sunlight barges through the high-set window. I blink up at it, feeling my eyes withdraw from the sight, and look back at Joe who is blissfully unaware of the world continuing onward without him. The light catches on something silver and I look down at a chain that lies loosely around his neck. I peer at it and find myself taking a rectangular trinket into my hands, running my thumb over the engraved words there.

_Joseph D. Liebgott  
DOB: 05-17-15  
Catholic..._

I linger on the last line, and it impresses on me a new image of Joe. A new loose end has been tied and the evidence, the word, is repeated like scripture in my head. _Catholic. _Over and over and again.

* * *

Footnotes: **I know BoB Liebgott was Jewish, but it is known that sometimes soldiers' dog tags are stamped wrong in terms of religion. **Anyway, things are going to change soon. Fate is slowly brewing! :)


	4. Nocturnal Saint

_Author's Notes: _Another day, another chapter. Work was hard today, but I am so caught up in writing this story that I wanted, very badly, to write this. So...hopefully it came out okay. Thank you to Eleanor Rigby, booklover1357, Goldsilver02 and britt for the reviews! They are much appreciated! Please do let me know if I have put too much description in here and not enough dialogue. If it's too flowery or embellished, let me know and I will try to fix it or at least be less verbose in the next chapter.

disclaimer - I own nothing of Band of Brothers and no disrespect is intended toward the men of Easy Company. This is merely fiction and is based on the fictional portrayal of Joe Liebgott.

* * *

I have not slept.

Still, I have not let the lure of dreams without blood and men born of provocation take me to bed, tuck my haggard body into the shape of its form. Sleep does not call to me, only the presence of mind not to let myself wonder why it is that I find myself on my knees scrubbing away dying brushstrokes of gore.

The dress and stole I have worn since the morning prior aids me in leading away the cold, the shawl climbing down my shoulders and pooling on the floor in wisps of fallen cloth. It mingles with the melting snow that has turned gray in becoming nothing more than chilled water, no longer pieces of silent beauty that falls from an aching sky. The blood is the only source of animation it holds anymore. The only figment of life it clings desperately to as to not become nothing more than marks in old, pitted floorboards.

In fact, as I am now in such close proximity to the floor as to hear its protestations and grievances, it speaks to me of the evidence which surfaces through the medium of a threadbare rag. Evidence of the man dozing away the hours of his day of rest in the company of a tub.

There are old denotations, ones that I have missed in the engagements I have made with the patrons that come and go, silk and wool coats for winter. Carcasses of old ashes are buried in the cracks of the floorboards, in sepulchers of forgotten darkness. Crumbled cakes of mire are lodged into clefts of the decaying wood and they encircle the filth like the rounded embrace of basins. Like bowls.

Mostly, however, the floor imparts to me the traces of yesterday. Of liberated darkness that gives way to manacle the conquered light to its cage of morning. Only guards of shadows remain to make certain that dawn cannot escape its fate. Kismet has decided this passion play, this call to arms, and it cannot loosen its shackles to elude this task to illuminate the world for human eyes, a lantern to shed radiance upon mankind's eternal dance with mortality.

Even in the dull gray of rousing dawn, I can see the blood. There are all forms of it that strain into the body of the floorboards as if through a sieve. Blood mixed with alcohol. Blood mixed with spit that drained from a mouth open with desperation, to take in as much air as it can manage, but finding there is not enough energy to muster for even the simplest act of breathing. There is blood that looks as if it were put there by an ailing painter, blood that looks as if it may have fallen from the sky like a raindrop, blood that rises in the form of Joe's boot soles.

It is everywhere in the miniature foyer, and only the pathway that leads up the stairs is mingled with it. His footprints have turned from their original scarlet to the throttled hue of rust. I keep my pail of steaming hot water close to me, dipping the soiled rag to rinse it quickly and continue the drudgery.

Before long, the once pure water is defiled by human insides. By Joe's terrible vices which manifest in dismantled ashes and his equally atrocious manners in the form of his inability to wipe his shoes at the door, where I have long since placed a mat for his use. It is my belief that he has not even seen it and that if I do not soon acknowledge its existence for him, it shall be doomed to a long, lonely life of futility. Of never being used.

Day moves on without me, forgetting my efforts to evade sleep which prods the back of my skull like insistent fingers. The irritant abandons me to pursue other victims, perhaps the world-weary soldiers that wake and find that dreams have mislead them, giving them no vestiges of rest. I am glad to be rid of her, of tactless weariness, for I wait patiently for the man upstairs to wake.

In the meantime, my task proves useful in distracting me from the questions that plague a troubled mind. _Why _Joe? Why? This is the most frequent of visitors, the ones that come pounding on the doorstep of my curiosity much like Joe does, like he did on the first day of his arrival. Why have they done this to you? Why have you deserved such bruises, such illustrations of hatred to carve your handsome face?

_Why?_

At long last, a groan issues from the half-opened door that lies in wait for me to enter it. Usually, the partition is arranged in a very clear image of what he wishes to convey to me. You are unwelcome, it says to me. Keep away.

But as the duty has fallen to me, I am left to keep the door in whatever state of welcome I please. I take it upon myself to place it at half mast so that I may all the better hear what sounds may emit from inside. I am already at the base of the staircase when I hear him and I am quick to discharge the rag from my person, sliding the bucket out of harm's way, before I spring to my feet as if it is a command which summons me to the attic.

I rush to the cupboards to retrieve a glass of water for the poor soul upstairs. Long practice in the art of victory over the effects of too much drinking have left me prepared for not only what symptoms may arise the day after, but also learned in what to give the sufferer. Water and tea have always been able-handed comrades in warding off the results of alcohol sickness; even if they cannot eradicate it completely and immediately, they are capable of easing the illness away as the body cleanses itself naturally.

Of course, medicine is always the first choice to mask the pain, but as I have none, all I am able to present him with is a glass of water and an offer of tea.

When I reach the top of the stairs and wrestle with the door to gain entry into the room, I find Joe making a sort of swan dive into bed. This provokes the illness even further and into the pillow he issues a very long moan of mixed pain and frustration.

"Joe," I call to him from across the room. "Joe, I have some water for you."

"_Fuck_ water," he replies, first lifting his head and turning it toward me so that the full effect of his rejection may be heeded. "I need pills. Or a fuckin' blood transfusion."

"I am hardly practiced enough in medicine to provide you with what will only prove to be an unnecessary treatment," I reply, and hand to him his glass of water. He takes it, only to set it on the end table close by. "And since I am already certain you will ask again, I must inform you that I have no medication for pain."

He scoffs as he attempts to sit up, but the strain is too hard on him, and he over exerts himself. I know better than to risk wounding his pride by helping him, so I merely watch as he reaches for the water with shaking hands and grimaces of pain.

I am ever resigned to my rightful station as an observer of a man at war with himself, with the world, and with the black shroud of death that ever approaches him. It eclipses his every footstep, threatens his stature as a self-proclaimed figment of immortality.

"Of _course_ you don't."

"Perhaps if you did not drink, you would not need the medicine at all. The saints would take pity on you," I gently assure him, and find, all too late, that the proposition I have been so quick to make without imposition of thought is a mistake.

His eyes flash as he slams the cup of water down on the end table. It is my turn to wince now as the sound leaves long, painful gashes in the progress we have been making toward armistice. "Lady, if I fucking wanted to be scolded, I'd write to my mother and tell her about all the nasty things I've said and done since I left her back home, okay?" He pauses, as if ambushed by a firm thread of remembrance, and his dark eyes catch me in their snare. "And saints? I don't believe in no fucking saints."

"Your tags. They say you are Catholic-"

"They also say I am a soldier. That I belong to the service," he replies heatedly, dragging his teeth over his lips like knives over bare flesh. The soft flesh whitens, paling beneath such menaces of pressure, and then recedes into reddened loneliness. "I belong to no one. I stand on my own ground. They might tell me what to do, but they don't fucking tell me how to live my life."

The words infused with the boiled blood of passion recall to me a poem. They resonate the words of Henley. _I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul._

He abandons the water to stagnancy to spite me but in the end, I know, it will only spite himself. It does me no harm not to drink it. I have no liquid poison coursing through my veins, clouding my mind with an ache that imitates the rhythmic pulse of a heartbeat. I have come to find that Joe sometimes devotes himself to causes that he thinks will prove himself as a man of principle, to establish that pain leaves no mark on his endeavors to go against the grain of society, but they are mostly campaigns executed in vain. They are lost to indifference. He succeeds only in making himself suffer for things that no one but himself may understand.

"If you are not Catholic, then what are you?"

He recites to me his beliefs with unwavering pride. "I'm a Jew."

A flood of comprehension finds me somewhere. It dictates reason. In my head, the pieces are being swept together to make a bigger picture, and finally there is a small flicker of logic behind this bloody mess of a man that sits before me. Why he aches with bruises. Why he has been reduced to a river of blood and rage. Persecution. Rejection. _Hatred_.

"Joe," I say, seeking him in the depths of his thoughts where I have left him. His eyes flicker toward me, uncertain of my shape that appears formless in the vaporous commotion of reflection, but they are attentive enough. They slide into focus. "Joe, what happened? Why did they beat you?"

"Don't you fucking listen?" He retorts. He does not bother to control his fury, no matter how badly it hurts to summon such fire when he is already covered in the burns of the inferno that raged last night. "I just told you why. Isn't it reason enough?"

"No, it is not reason enough. There must be more to it than your religion. Than your race. And I must make it my business to know if this will be a frequent occurrence. If you are to live here and I must clean up the mess afterward," I insist. I try to take his hand, to break through the guarded walls of his resolve, but it retreats into his own self-induced madness. "Please, I only wish to help you. You are always so quick to dismiss me-"

"You really wanna know the reason they beat me? Why I fought back?" He asks, his brow gathering over the bridge of his nose in the folds of a very distinct glower. "Are you so fucking desperate to know me, to know who I am, that you must know why? Will the world end if you aren't well informed of what goes on in my own _fucking _private life?"

I swallow hard against tears. It feels as if I am swallowing glass and it cuts through my voice, which comes to him in the form of a frail whisper. "If I were to tell you it were, would it even sway your decision to keep me locked out of your life at all?"

He leans forward. His eyes are rimmed red and one is still swollen, the shadows thrown over the wounded socket deepened by black and blue. "Because I _wanted_ them to."

At the threshold of revelation, he leaves me. Forsakes me in the darkness of half-truths and carefully concocted lies and I am left to wander them, try to delve into what I know, what he has written for me, to find what is missing. He turns, his bone-thin back facing me, and I take this as a very deliberate gesture of goodbye. Of dismissal. All offers have been denied. I am no longer needed, if I ever was, and I take my leave.

The floor is clean when I reach the bottom of the stairs, the door now returned to its forbidden state. Everything is finished. The cup which once housed my morning tea is now drained of all life, a dry bone picked clean of its purpose. The woolen coat lies finished, laid out on my bed, a skeleton waiting to be breathed into life by a little girl made of smiles and ribbons winding through her hair. There is nothing more to do. I am relieved of all distraction.

And the door, it is closed.

I know my place. I know it well.

I keep repeating this to myself, that I am aware, that I am cognizant. It is a mantra that I dictate to myself as I look into the mirror and practice the words, learn them by watching them form on my lips, watching them expand and in their unveiling, perhaps I may find the true meaning behind them. _I know my place. I know it well. _

But I have never asked myself. What precisely defines this elusive place? This unmarked position that I have been sorted into without my knowing, without my consent? Is it servant? Whipping boy? Scapegoat? Enemy?

However can I know what continues to elude my understanding?

* * *

At noon, I am to meet with the little girl from Littlecote with her father. When I leave the house for the meeting, I find myself in a world steeped in fallen clouds. Tufts of white that remain from the winter storm the night before are still melting. They will return, soon, when the chill commits to stay for the remaining season. Until it decides when to pledge to such a visit, the countryside village must do with puddles of slush and thin films of ice covering the lingering puddles.

She is just as I dreamed she would be when the time comes and I find them in the heart of Aldbourne.

She is a beautiful little thing. A cherub with the rouge of life dashed upon her cheeks and lips that shoot an arrow of love through one's heart with every smile from their cupid's bow form. Her eyes are clear like the touch of heaven upon a dying hand. There is nothing clearer in the world than them. And they are fashioned of such forget-me-not blue that would entreat even the most absent of minds to remember their shade.

I kneel before the little angel in her old coat that seems to have borne the brunt of age for some time. The hems billow and snap in the wind like curtains hung upon a lively window, through which a trail of breeze scatters to absorb every angle, every shape, every corner of the room. She halts before me, bright and cheerful, and the wind of motion gathers to leave through the portal from which it came.

Her father is a mere foot soldier. Nothing less, but he boasts no patches of valor upon his cold, distant uniform. Within the shell of military attire, a warm soul is suppressed. He shakes my hand, thanks me for spending such time on the project, and I bid my patron goodbye with a smile and acceptance of his gratitude. The little girl is already wearing her new coat so proudly. The scarlet plays upon the quiet brown of her hair, makes it vibrant, makes it sing.

The little girl does not leave my mind even now, as I make my way through the courtyard of the city sprinkled with stragglers of people here and there. It fades into the background of the bookshop as I enter it, the verve in her eyes which can only be attributed to a life stifled by rationing. A new coat, an early Christmas present before her father must away for God knows how long. Only he knows. Perhaps he will not tell us until it is too late.

The owner of the shop is a quiet old man. His gaze does not inflict judgment, nor does it reflect unwanted pity where sympathy should have been in its stead. He is simply there to spread the joy of reading, preach the wonders of the imagination, and perhaps lead those blind to such vivid words behind the cold spine of a book and what seems nothing more than an empty title of gold-leafed lettering.

I am already privy to the gospel of make believe. He is only called upon to collect my offerings to the church of muses, the congregation of words which hail the glory of tales of old. The saint, he thanks me for my donation to the cause, and his blessing comes to me, humbly, in the form of a thank you. _Please, _he beseeches me calmly, _please, do not waste your savings on books if you do not have the funds for them. One cannot read if he cannot eat!_

I smile and pat his hand consolingly. _Do not worry. I have enough food for the body. It is the mind that needs nourishment._

This not only pleases him, but sets the concern of his good heart to rest. It may sleep peacefully, I think to myself as I leave the shop.

An hour has not passed since I have left the house. There is nothing more to do. The tasks of the day are over before it has even begun. My mind turns over the possibility of making a stop at the tea room, to bask in the light of normalcy for a little while, if only for such a fleeting moment as an hour. With the books under my arm, the thin collections of Henley and Poe promising a dark, winding entrance into the epicenter of the soul which only their melancholy reflections may uncover, I could pass such an hour without even knowing it has gone.

I have almost been coerced into the idea. The concept is alluring. But as I make to turn down the small, dirt lane that leads to the town tea shop, I find myself stopping before I even know the reasoning behind my halt.

Two young women dressed for winter approach me. I, myself, am not equipped for the sudden breach of frost that nips at my cheeks and numbs the fingers which I stow away into my thin pockets. They cannot escape the cold in such unseasonal attire.

I do not recognize the pair, though they seem to know my face well. Before I came along, before I invaded their destined path for the tea shop, they chattered happily amongst themselves. Birds in the trees which sing their lively songs of spring. And though it is winter, and the call for dreary rumination often haunts the best of us, I am cheered by the advent of such premature springtime bliss. This all changes, however, once they catch sight of me.

The taller of the two, the less lovely face, goes still in the middle of portraying the logic which the mind behind it wishes to communicate. The air between them goes still. No longer tangled with the crusades of battling opinions that will likely lead to nothing but friendly ceasefire between two long-time companions.

She whispers to her friend and calls to attention my presence. The other whispers back, her eyes narrowed, brow digging deep into the sockets of her eyes like shadows of doubt. For a transient moment, I inwardly talk myself into believing it is Joe that I am looking at. That this is not the whimsical passing of a stranger in the street; this is adversity in flesh.

But the moment passes. The two women are upon me. At once, I am reminded of the rumor mill which works tirelessly around me while I cease to remember its existence. The shorter, the more antagonistic of the two, spits at my feet. The hateful gesture only narrowly misses the front of my shoe.

All hopes of venturing into the sheltered normalcy of the tea shop are shattered. There is no normalcy there. Only a reminder of what little I have left of the life I once knew.

When I return home, back to my shabby confinements, I take out my sewing materials. A spool of silver thread. Caskets of buttons. My eye catches on something of a project left for later, the pea coats that need lining stitched into them, and in my desperation, I take it out to the kitchen to be resumed.

I do not stop working until the feeling dissipates. The feeling of being winded. Of running from something I cannot escape, no matter how hard I try as long as I keep running in place. As long as I stay here, I am a captive to their disdain. A prisoner of their hearsay.

When at last I calm my racing heart, my pounding lungs, and I no longer must sink my teeth into my lips to hide the gloss of tears, I set the unfinished pea coat down upon the table.

I disregard the world outside my window. For a moment, a simple notch in time, I remain still.

* * *

Late October;;

* * *

It is late when I at last find that Joe has not come home at all.

There is a great part of my mind that whirls through the motions, like gears, in very frantic thought once the revelation strikes me. A violent hand upon an unsuspecting cheek. Why has he not come home? It is Thursday. He has training tomorrow, bright and early, with the rising sun. He cannot be at the pub, can he?

My heart halts at the possibility of death. Lying half-frozen and bleeding somewhere in the gutters of Aldbourne. A smashed figurine of rebellion that no longer has the will to fight, so he simply relents, and allows them to break him.

I can imagine the scene.

He is coming apart. The fissures widen as his frame begins to give way beneath the blows. He bleeds and the scarlet flow is like stained glass fleeing from the impact. With every new image that drowns me in horror, in fear of where he might be, what might have happened to him, the seed of decision grows even further. At last, it is no longer a sapling, a young concept, but a great tree bearing the fruits of resolution, and I rush to my room to find a shawl. The most suitable I have for such freezing weather is frayed and as old as time itself, but I am too shaken to care much for the jaws of winter that are to await me outside my door.

I am sprinting through the streets before it can even catch me, gnashing at my heels, an angry dog cheated of its chew toy. It does not draw near enough to scathe my uncovered skin, to tear through my unsuitable clothes, until I find little clusters of uniformed men ambling through the deserted town. I realize I am close to the base, where many of the soldiers are leaving for the night from the nearby pub.

All former perceptions of reserve and modesty that are expected of women are dashed from me in pieces. I phase through them, a ghost searching for its lost grave, unmarked somewhere amongst angels made of stone. Each meeting can be considered, by the standards of etiquette, to be hideously unmannerly. No names are exchanged, no curtsies, not even a hand shake. Just one question. A question is all I have to give.

_Do you know a man named Joseph Liebgott?_

Sometimes, a name is not enough. A description. Designs of thick hair through which pale, thin fingers run their frustrations. Descriptions of dark eyes, of the thin body that hides beneath ill-fitting clothes. _Nothing comes to mind,_ they always say. _Nope, I don't think I know him, but I'll be your Joseph Liebgott if you don't find the schmuck. _

At last, I reach a man that walks in silence, that walks alone. From behind, all I can see is dark hair that mingles and dances with the night, the likeness of unity broken only by the flashes of stars where there is only swallowed light in this man's lonely shadow.

I reach him. Reach _for _him. I do not know why it is that I suffer such concern, such desperation born of worry that seems misplaced for the man that has ruined every familiarity I ever knew in my life. Before him, at least I had routine, I had peace, even if poverty stole what it could of my livelihood. Without him, perhaps everything would return to the way it was, attempt to reclaim its raiment of the old monotony. The fit would be different. It would not feel the same against skin that has been tainted by Joseph Liebgott's conquering of my life. He will stain me forever.

But such thoughts are not present. Only that I find him and make sure he is all right.

"Sir," I call to the retreating figure, the one that thaws like black ice within the darkness as it moves against the heated stars. "Sir, please. I must speak with you for a moment."

In the gloom, I cannot see his face. A shroud of mist drifts over the pallor of the moon. He stops, however, and I can feel him listening for my voice, even if I cannot witness his focus for myself. I must trust the sound of his turning toward me, of his silver-stained breath that floats into the air against the black sky.

"Sir, do you know Joseph Liebgott?"

"Yes," comes the voice, lilting in a very strange, very foreign accent. "Yes, I know Liebgott. He's in my unit."

"Oh," I breathe, clutching my hand to my heart which now thuds harder with relief. "Please, sir. Please tell me where he is if you can? I quarter him, you see, and I have been waiting for him, but he has not come home."

"He collapsed today in training, ma'am," he replies. "It's pneumonia. Not too far along yet, not bad enough for it to kill him, but he'll have to stay in the aid station until I clear him."

"How long might that be, sir?"

"Can't be sure with these sort of things. A week or more."

He waits for me to answer as I let the information slowly digest itself in the fertile plains of thought in my head. It escaped my notice, I realize. I never even knew he was sick. "Can't I see him?"

"I am sorry," he replies, his voice a sympathetic drawl. "But you've got no authorization to be on base. Send for me in a few days and I'll let you know how he's doin'. Don't you worry, now. He'll be just fine. You go home now and rest. Send for me and I'll come as soon as I can."

"Who must I send for?" I ask. "What is your name?"

"Eugene Roe."

This man who I know only as a strange piece of darkness seems to comfort me in a way that no visible face could have done. His anonymity seems almost angelic, as if he is sent here to assuage the guilt and the fear that nestles deep inside my being, grows in me like trees of filth and fragile humanity. God has sent this black shade to me.

_Please, do not despair. There will come a time for redemption. It is not now…go home. Sleep. I will come to you when it is time. I will summon you to arms against the rival of serenity._

I wish to see his face. To shed this curtain of darkness which separates me from the giver of peace, of stillness. But the figure merely bows his head gently, as if to pardon himself as humbly as he can, and I know I must wait.

His footsteps disappear into the emptiness of the night just as the moon tears away her mask of cloud. The world is again radiant with silver-blue light.

* * *

Footnotes: I suppose I do not have any at this time except to say: thanks for reading! :)


	5. Tea With Eugene and Other Happenings

_Author's Note: _I am glad everyone is enjoying this story so far. Thank you so much to beckylove, Smeeeedy, Goldsilver02, bayumlikedayum and EllieMay for their reviews! I do hope this is edited properly, but I was watching a movie while I looked it over. I'll look it over again later so disregard any mistakes.

disclaimer - I own nothing of Band of Brothers and no disrespect is intended toward the men of Easy Company. This is merely fiction and is based on the fictional portrayal of Joe Liebgott.

* * *

It is a dreary morning when Eugene Roe comes to see me, tucked away into the lapels of a winter coat that dwarfs his slight frame and flecked with errant slivers of snow. The white flakes rush forward to greet him as his great black boots trudge through the ankle-deep fall, all in a great fluster like nervous ballet dancers as they twirl about in the air, graceful in their sky-bred purity, only to rest upon his shoulders when they tire of their frolicking. He arrives on my doorstep with a reddened nose, pinched by the bitter hands of winter's cold, and shivering. The man is more beautiful than any cherubic countenance I could have ever hoped to imagine, even in his ruffled state of mind.

My company is more than satisfactory and I find myself meeting no reluctance in reopening my last good jar of marmalade for him when he comes.

It is safe to say that any sort of company would be suitable for me at this moment. I have practically become savage in my lack of human interaction lately. Since Joe's absence from the house became a semi-permanent occurrence, I have taken to the old normalcy as one would an old hat that no longer fits. I feel as if I am endeavoring to walk backwards, traipse the looking glass of my past. I may see it, I may feel its presence, but it is no more real than that illusory glance into the mirror. When everything is rendered glass-like and beautiful, but cold and hard when I reach out to break it, let it crumble beneath my fingertips, and touch only the face of illusion.

In the midst of social ennui, however, the woman of commerce in me has become nothing more than a collection of wracked nerves. My patrons have been very few as of late as the wounding gossip surrounding the business of Joe's staying here has become infected. The entire town is quietly seething at what they assume is the establishment of a private _yank _brothel, right under their noses. The epidemic of intolerance spreads easily, passed through words born of cruel intentions, and with every contamination, the sewn meaning grows into happy seeds of destruction. The inception of my downfall has long since phased into its adolescent stage – alienation.

I am the leper. I am the scarlet letter. I am no one at all.

Their crusade against such filth proves to be a successful one at that. I am floundering for the finances to keep food in my house, to keep wood in my wrought iron stove. My hands tremble with this new sickness of futility as they have never known it, never experienced such a dreadful thing as being there only to perform the requirements of subsistence. They are lifted only to eat, to dress and to drink tea. Perhaps a book may slip into their solitary dome of suffering, where it may give them morsels of console in the form of turning pages. Of tracking down lost paragraphs that have been dismantled and deformed in the arms of hopes and worries struggling to recapture my focus. Mostly, it is poetry that seeps into the veins of my palms, my wrists and fills me with enlivening reflection, distracts me from the doldrums of decay.

But the beauty of poetry against the withered ugliness of a destroyed reputation may only last so long before its blossom fades, its petals fall and is lost to winter forever. It is like the gentle voice of spring; it may only last as long as the warmth hums its tender song into the currents of the mild air.

My companion is silent as these thoughts reverberate throughout the room. He is a sounding board upon which they fall, from which they stem, as if he is everything but merely human. I still bustle about the minute kitchen and this small corner of the earth in which I store my food and situate my table for working upon is warmed by the presence of the dark-eyed angel of stone.

For the momentous occasion of broken isolation, a celebratory fire must be lit in the wrought iron stove. I begin to slip on my shawl and I fall under Eugene's scrutiny almost as if in wordless inquisition. It is not until I reach for my shoes that he shapes them into words made not for thought, but for human ears.

"Miss, if this is a bad time for me to be here," he begins, his delicate mouth pursing for a moment as he pauses. Watching me, perhaps, to make sure he is not mistaking my intentions to leave. "I don't wish to burden you if you are busy."

"Nonsense," I reply, wrapping my stole around me a little tighter. It is my only barricade against the bitter cold that is to greet me outside my door and invade every patch of bare skin it may find. "I will only steal outside for a moment to fetch some firewood. If you like, you may remain here while I am away."

He does not attempt to smile, as his lips seem to curl a little at their somber edges, trying to lift the cloud of sobriety. But it is no use. He is as grave as a fallen angel. The patron saint of lost causes himself knows no greater gentleness of character.

"You going out in just that?" He asks as he follows me out into the frozen veil that the air has become. Falling snow embellishes the miasma like lattices of feathers, soft sirens of light. "But Miss, you'll freeze."

I am already frozen, I want to say as I shuffle my way through thick wads of snow. A little here, a little there, as if the gnomes have come to forge fortresses of ice on my frozen lawn. But I refrain. He does not know of my wardrobe's sore lack of winter raiment. "It is no use, Mr. Roe," I reply, burying my fingers into my snow-riddled shawl. "I equip myself for as long as I must be out here, which is hardly long at all. I will be just fine, but I thank you very kindly for your concern."

I don't even require an axe for such paltry leftovers that I am to obtain from my obliging tree. The only branches that I may reach are nearly rid completely of their limbs. The poor guardian has become a willing amputee, a martyr for the cause of saving its mistress from the slow descent into measured hypothermia. After all, if it should let me die, who else would water it come spring time when it shakes off its coverlets of ice and snow and makes way for the lush greenness to find it again? Not a soul.

My guest is taller than what little height I may boast, and because of his advantage, he may reach the second layer of tangled twigs and thickly woven branches that I can only graze with the tips of my fingers. He takes this private thought of mine into consideration, dredging it up from the distant corners of my mind, and begins collecting as many twigs and boughs as he can manage.

By the time we are through, the both of us are carrying a suitable amount of wood for tinder and burning into the foyer. I dry the outer layer of smooth bark as best as I can with my soiled apron, the folds of my stole flowing from my shoulders as if seeking the tide of heat which ebbs and flows out of the open grate. The lovely savior of lost souls kneels before it as well, feeding the starving flames with tinder so that they may grow. The golden light washes over his porcelain skin, foamless crests of fire, as if crashing upon the shores of paradise.

I watch him for a quiet moment, thinking that he must have been made for poetry. That every line of elegance engraved into his face is a sonnet yet to be written, a ballad yet to be sung. He is made of muses. Sculpted entirely of glass-like beauty and strange gentleness that contrasts so sharply against Joe's fiery splendor. He finishes stowing away the logs into the flames and then meets my eyes. Darkness clashing with light.

I sigh and wipe the soot from my fingers with my apron. "Would you care for something warm to drink? You look half-frozen."

"I could say the same for you," he replies as he follows me to the kitchen table. For once, there is no half-finished commission lying there in rumpled disarray. The surface is littered with books of poetry instead. A tray of freshly purchased biscuits lies in wait, sheltered into the hub of the arrangements, while the marmalade spread is situated close by within its unsealed jar. There are so few left that I simply put out all of them for him to eat when he came.

"You may call me Alice Gray if you wish," I offer, attempting my best to assuage his instinct to save, to keep safe. "And it is nothing, truly. I am quite all right. Will you not have some tea and a biscuit? I believe the marmalade is still good."

"Miss Gray," he confirms, distancing himself from the invitation of informality. "Just tea, thank you. No bread."

Here he is. Eugene Roe. He is quietly pulling out the chair that he only just tucked away hurriedly in his rush to accompany me outside into the cold. And he has come to relay to me the circumstances of Joe's condition.

I will not to relate such affirmations of my emotions to strangers, not even ones who seem to have been torn from the fabric of heaven itself. But I am able to confess to myself that I have missed Joe. Despite his damning qualities, his condemnation of character, the stubborn man has somehow made himself into something of a saving grace for me. As if he meant to, from the very beginning, and it was only a matter of time before the mold was cast and he could establish himself into the shape of someone I could become attached to before long. But the most puzzling concept is that Joe never changed himself at all to fit such statues of perfection. He has only been, and ever will be, himself.

The belligerent soldier who traipses through my house as if it his own, leaving footprints brushed with blood and mire in his wake, has become an escape from loneliness. From monotony which threatens the very survival of my sanity. He is the man that shouts to the world his disapproval, that is contrary and infuriating at every turn, that cannot simply pass the opportunity of a fight if it means his beliefs are at stake. This is Joe wrapped in skin, who has been flourished with dark plumes of beautiful hair and eyes like two shards of warmed earth framed by lovely black lashes; with these he will mislead the masses who will think him handsome, whose every intent is to deliberate such unerring perfection in its human form. But Joe will show them. He will prove to the world that there is more to him than clothes that never fit and diction attached to him that never quite matches its muse.

Even when he is away, Joe inspires the most profound study of the human condition. The condundrum that first came to my door, pounding as if all Hell was upon his heels, is beginning to peel away its layers with every passing hour. The transformation is so quiet, so slow, that I have not paid mind to it until now when the passages of this cottage are absent of his heavy footfalls, of his rasping voice.

I miss the effect he has on this place. As if every breath which emanates from his body is stored into the seams of this house, gives life where life has never been before. And I selfishly wish him here. I wish him where he belongs as the undaunted truth embedded, bleeding, within a countryside teeming with gossip and lies.

In a matter of mere minutes, the tea kettle begins to shriek somewhere beside me. My mind wanders as I place the bags of herbs to steep and fetch two cracked china cups from the cupboards. Perhaps Joe will be able to come home tonight? Tomorrow? No, it cannot be so. If such instances existed they would have been made known to me the moment he arrived. He must still be quite stricken with ailment if my intimations turn out to be true.

The last few moments have been ones of utter silence. It is as if sound never existed at all behind these old partitions, behind closed doors that harbor not a murmur, not a sigh. I am lost to my own thoughts and he seems ensnared by the treacherous grasp of his own. Neither of us seem intent on breaking such seclusion until I sit down, the both of us cradling warm cups of black tea into our palms.

I look at him from across the table, entreating him soundlessly to speak.

He is looking back, but I notice this far too late. "You look quite tired, Miss Gray."

I smile at such a direct observation, still swathing the hot cup in my hands. "Dabbling a little in the art of mind reading while you train for war, are you sir?"

He laughs, the first sign of mirth to grace his tapered features, and it is something of a fascination to watch him take his first sip of tea. "No," he quietly replies. "No, I think if I had talents like those I'd be the pride of the family back home."

"And where exactly is home, Mr. Roe?" I ask, anticipating any change of expression in his countenance. "May I call you Eugene?"

"Eugene is quite fine, ma'am," he affirms mildly, and I notice his accent grows a little deeper in its sultry octave, a little thicker, as if home is trying to sink back into his veins. Purge his system of all English influence. "And home…well, home is back in Louisiana."

There is an old adage which threads through conversation every now and then, through stories that tell of love and sacrifice, of tragedy and war. _Home is where the heart is. _I listen closely to the body before me which frames the beating of a doleful heart, but I cannot hear its steady cadence. Only the sound of lungs siphoning the fire-lit air, going through the motions of sustaining life. Behind dark corridors of stone-colored eyes, there are thoughts and ideas, concepts that wait to be weighed and measured, considered for manufacturing.

But there is an emptiness to Eugene Roe that does not seem like it can be filled. A listlessness. Mildness of temper and kindness and concern cannot be mistaken in this man, but there is also no mistaking the sense of loss that throws a softer darkness around his sharp, purposeful structure.

The moment is transitory. It moves throughout the rooms as if seeking shelter from the cold, but it can find no permanent ground upon which it may rest, for the windowpanes which lead straight into Eugene's soul are suddenly obscured. The shutters have been pulled over them. In his eyes I can now only see a reflection of myself, not of the man who walks as if a dreamer in an insomniac world.

"I came here to tell you about Liebgott," he says while he pushes the tea away from him. As if he has found it is truth serum that loosens his tongue and softens his will to remain strong in the face of the unknown. "I told you to summon me and that I would come as soon as I knew for certain of his condition."

I straighten a little. This is news I have been waiting ever so patiently for. It has been in subdued agony, the kind that only comes to those who wait, but it is nonetheless pain. Pain that followed in close pursuit of whatever thoughts that may have turned to Joe during this past week he has been away.

"Yes?" I attempt to mask the nature of my prying, try to make it sound less like insistence and more like a casual turn of conversation. "Yes, how is the old devil doing?"

"He's in good hands," he assures me, and my heart instantaneously stills in its heedless moaning. "Our aid station is well equipped and there's always someone there keeping watch over him. Don't you worry. I'll have him sent home as soon as I have him cleared for training."

Every muscle in his body begins to shift as he makes to stand and I follow suit. I am on my feet before he is, but he perceives nothing of this as his eyes are cast downward, facing his hands. They become the center of the room, the focal point of what feels like everything in this superficial moment, this shallow instant lapping against the depths of time.

He takes off his winter jacket to reveal a uniform the shade of subdued tawny. All too quickly I find the reason behind his shedding of layers. The pocket of his shirt is entirely in the wrong place as it hangs, a languid appendage, from its torn seams, revealing the inside of what seemed to be a very religiously used compartment before.

"Before I go," he says contritely, as if in lieu of an apology. "I heard in passing from Joe that you're a bit of a seamstress. He don't know if it's habit or business that draws you to it, but all the same you have a hand with the needle."

He pauses and fixes his eyes on me and as his gaze fills me to the brim with the color of a stormy sea, I feel as if I am staring into the very soul of the deepest of oceans. "I'd be willing to pay extra if it's not too much trouble for you. I can stitch up a lost button or sew on a patch or two if need be, but this seems like work for more...delicate and capable hands, if you don't mistake me."

I assuage his excessive guilt with a gentle smile and outstretch my hands to take the injured garment. "I don't mistake you at all. I would be _happy _to patch up your pocket, Eugene," I reply. "In fact, I make it my intention to be troubled for fixing such trifling things so much that I fear it has entirely _become _my business, if you catch my drift."

The melancholy crevices of his half-ghost smile open up, as if to receive the makings of contentment that does not quite surface into his quiet features. From within his fisted hand comes the symphony of coins rustling against one another. I have not heard such sounds in a long time and my ears seem as if they should like to dance to the rhythm of such a beautiful clamor.

I inform him the payment is a mere shilling for a pocket.

But he insists, ever so gently, that it is two pounds instead.

* * *

Early November;;

* * *

It is from the kitchen that the stilted surge of footsteps originates.

I am sitting at the window in my room when I first heed such a strangled sound and it rouses me from all receptacles of musing like thunder coursing through the gentle thrum of falling rain. At once, I am startled. My father is not to come, for he more than often writes of his encroachment before his physical manifestation inflicts itself upon my household.

I can only assume that it is Joe. He has finally returned. And no matter how quick I am to dash such aspirations of happiness in the recesses of my errant heart, it is no use. It simply sings its praises of this momentous occasion. Joe is home. I am free of companionless existence. He is here to storm through the cobwebs that his absence has left behind and berate me endlessly with his abhorrent manners.

I cannot bring myself to care for the mechanics of his homecoming. Only that he is here and he is safe.

I am torn from the window and lead by the footfalls up the stairs, where the echoes of his arrival have already grown stale and lie dying within the walls upon which they first fell. The door has been left halfway open in his rush to reach sanctuary.

I am ready to excuse such behavior as custom, as an act of arbitrary fate or perhaps purpose as he means so desperately to draw himself a hot bath after weeks of being washed clean with a cold sponge. But as soon as I hear the labored breathing, something inside of me begins to turn to ice.

I know he will be cross with me as I take the rest of the stairs that separate me from that room in full stride, but the shadow of doubt deepens within my mind. The labored breaths do not stop. They simply toil on, as if the lungs have stopped working completely. The door falls open to reveal a figure lying on its back, its chest rising and falling rapidly, and it is not doubt that I collide with upon entering the attic. It is knowing. It is fear.

"Joe," I whisper to him, careful not to break him. He seems so fragile as I cross the room and find him lying in that bed, like a sketch of physical form that God forgot to provide with color. I kneel at his bedside, taking his hand into my own. It is like ice against my fingers – as cold and hard as ice.

"Joe, dear boy, look at me," I beseech him. He obeys, too weak to call upon the will to fight, and his eyes are glassy. Doll-like. "_Speak_ to me. Tell me you are all right."

He does not refute such claims. He does not even mean to speak. And for a moment, the dull throbs of horror resound in me as I watch his dark eyes blink up at me as if he does not see me at all. As if I am a smear of light in a world preyed upon by seamless dark. He turns his head away, resting his opposite cheek upon the downy pillow. This is all the answer I shall receive. I release his marble hand from my own and realize it has not been warmed by the contact.

In the corner of the room, the chest sits as if a squat sentinel beside the door. Inside, I have replaced the personal belongings with extra blankets for Joe's use if he should need them. I retrieve these stored coverlets and return to Joe's side. He is still breathing so laboriously that simply observing his slow starvation of oxygen makes me feel winded myself.

Part of this breathlessness I may rightly owe to rising hysteria. I am no nurse, nor am I equipped for the calm and the presence of mind required of such profession. To Joe I am nothing but a useless seamstress. If it were a gaping wound, I could endeavor to stomach the gore and sew the severed flesh, but this is different. This is Joe on the verge of a death I cannot recognize or even fight against. This is Joe in need of someone that knows what they are doing, that is familiar with such symptoms.

It occurs to me what I must do as I cover Joe's trembling body in two thickly woven quilts. Eugene will know. He treated Joe himself, hadn't he? No, I could not. The man is quite busy enough as it is without my needless hysterics being thrust upon him on all hours of the night. Only if it is serious…only if he is truly needed.

I pause, trying to catch my breath and gather my thoughts over the sound of Joe's wheezing. His eyes are closed, but they unfasten like pale curtains as I press the back of my hand to his forehead. It is blazing hot and my skin recoils from such scathing temperature.

It is no secret. I replace my hand at my side and inhale deeply, tremulously. Eugene is most certainly needed here.

"Joe," I call to him through the delirium. His head sways, rotates toward the sound of my voice that drifts through the feverish calm like a cooling breeze across the windswept desert. "Heed this promise. I am going to take care of you. I swear it on my mother's grave that I will."

I brush my fingertips across his sallow forehead and his eyes slither back closed against the consoling gesture. It is as if he is accepting my help.

Once I have fixed for him a cold compress and made certain that he is warm enough, I rush to gather warm attire for the venture outside and pen a quick summoning for the postman to deliver. In the doorway, a battle ensues in which I struggle to keep myself from dashing upstairs to check on Joe once more before I leave, but I call upon the strength to draw me out into the cold where I will be separate from him. Where he will be alone.

I recite a mantra that I devise as I tuck my hair beneath my shawl. _It is only for a few moments. He will be all right, Alice. He will be all right. Stay to the course and everything will be fine._

It is enough.

The snow has allayed when I close the door to the house behind me and a silver moon bathes the world in solemn white. Clouds assemble in the east, upon the mountaintops, a far off menace on another horizon. I dash through my courtyard toward the postman who lives only a few houses away.

But it seems so far. As if I am crossing the distance of an ocean that cannot be fathomed. Falling through empty sky that has never been measured. My feet move, but my brain does not urge them forward. It is caught in an ever growing bundle of fears. The word _death _is a frequent contributor to such mounting panic and every time the black fiend finds me in the midst of my uncertainties my feet move a little faster. As if they are cognizant of which thoughts graze the forefront of my innermost mind.

At last, I reach my destination and I take it upon myself, in my urgency, to trespass through the front gate. Inside the house, behind the curtained windows which are bare to the world like glass teeth in a friendly smile, light filters into the snow-smothered courtyard. Squares of gold are thrown upon the white ground and darken the shadows which surround them.

Within, there seems no noise, but as soon as I reach the door and knock three times upon it, an unmistakable rustling escapes through the cracks of the structure. Footsteps come to greet me.

Before long, I find it opening. The postman, the very same which came to me on the day of Joe's arrival in Aldbourne, stands washed in gold light as he stands in the frame of the entrance. His face is all astonishment as he takes in the countenance of his unexpected visitor.

He illuminates like a paper lantern within the leer of night. "Why if it isn't Alice Gray!"

The announcement of my name to the room spurs the attention of the wife. Behind the man at the door, I receive a very meaningful glare as she steps forward to make it known to me that I am not welcome. Not in any sense of the word.

"What on earth are you thinking of? Straying out into this cold weather like a thief in the night!" He chuckles heartily, but the mirth turns sour as his wife clears her throat behind him. His voice lowers as he continues, "can I help you with anything dearest girl?"

I hand him the letter. "Yes," I say. "In fact there is. You may deliver this to Eugene Roe straight away. Tell them it is urgent and that he must come immediately."

He takes the letter, but makes no intention of masking his disapproval. "Whatever would you want with a commonplace soldier so urgently, Alice?"

"I'm afraid that is my business, Earl," I reply. "And I must _insist _that you deliver this letter _now_. It is under the most desperate circumstance that I need this man."

"Yes, my dear, you have made it clear that he is needed," Earl sputters, closing the door a little as his wife begins to pry a little deeper into our business. It will make for most satisfying gossip later, I can only assume, but for now I cannot bring myself to care. "Whatever is he needed for?"

"It is the soldier that I am quartering," I reply, my voice breaking on the words. Speaking them aloud makes them feel real, as if I am bringing the idea of Joe's severe condition to life simply by entrusting the utterances to another human being. "He is very sick. I fear that he may be dying. That is all you must know about the situation, so sir, if you would please-"

His face contorts with pain. "Alice, why are you so cold to me - ?"

"_Please, _Earl, the letter!"

"All right," he says, putting his hand on my shoulder. It does not leave its perch as he assures me. "All right, darling girl, I will go. But only for you not this…this sickly boy. Go…return to your patient. I will deliver this letter and you will have your soldier in no time at all."

Every fiber of my skin recoils at the touch. The touch of the man who unintentionally besmirched by reputation simply by mentioning Joe's existence in my home to a wife he trusted. To the _true _culprit. But guilt by association wills me to resent him, and resent him I do indeed.

For now, I do not trouble myself with such paltry grievances.

They are nothing.

For now, I must return to Joe.

* * *

He does not bother to knock when he comes in. The situation is much too dire to waste precious time on such trifling customs as manners.

I am at his bedside as Eugene Roe arrives like an angel of mercy. A pack hangs loosely from his shoulder and it sways to his every step as he rushes inside, closing the door behind him, and I make way for the man to perform his miracles when I acknowledge his advent. A cloth is draped over Joe's burning forehead and his skin is damp with a cold sweat that seems to pool within the marrow of his very bones. The poor soul has been chilled for the last quarter of an hour since I returned to find him trembling. Terrible coughs that send waves of sympathy pouring from my urgent hands have intermittently wracked his painfully thin body.

But no sooner does Eugene come wafting in, a gentle breeze, I am calm. The plentiful waters of fear recede slowly until they are nearly dry and I watch, my heart slowing, as he hovers over Joe's listless form. He takes a thermometer out of his pouch and positions it between Joe's ashen lips. While he waits for the instrument to measure the body's temperature, he retrieves a torch and flashes it before Joe's eyes. The lack of response seems to trouble him, but it is such a subtle wave of disconcertment that I barely feel its presence stretch across the deathly silent room.

"I didn't clear him," he tells me, his lips curling over a very distinct scowl. "He wasn't supposed to leave the station until I cleared him."

He procures the thermometer from Joe's mouth. For a moment, he simply halts in his gliding motions, and he gives the instrument a good shake as if he cannot believe what he is seeing. But as he examines the tool once more and finds it unchanged, I hear him curse under his breath.

The words are not meant for me to hear, but I cannot turn them away as they come to find me.

_Damn it, Joe, don't you ever listen to a word anyone says? Your stubbornness is gonna kill you one of these days._

One of these days. As if he knows Joe will live to see more. I am calmed for a moment by such glorious assurance, but as Eugene turns to me, his face flushed and his eyes dark with inimitable anger, a shred of the former hysteria returns to me.

"We have to cool him down _now," _he says to me.

I pause, swallowing hard against the growing lump in my throat as the madness returns full form. All faith in hope itself fades away. "Or what will happen, Eugene?"

"Or his brain's gonna burn up and there will be no savin' him," he replies. He bites his lip, thinking hard on the next course of action. I will follow wherever he leads as long as he leads me to Joe's recovery. "You got any cold water? And I mean _ice_ cold."

"No, only the water I draw from the well out back," I reply, trying to hide my hands that have begun to tremble in fear beneath my apron. "It should be cool, but it runs so deep that I do not know if it will be cold."

If he has heeded my reply at all, the evidence of such incidence does not appear at all. "You undress him. I'll draw the bath. If we have to, we'll use snow. Just get him in there quick, all right? Just stay calm, Alice. Everything's going to be okay."

I try to believe him. But as he leaves the room and the shroud of dread falls back into place, I cannot be so easily assured by the ghost of comfort that he has left behind to take his place. Joe is limp as I struggle to undress him. Before long, he is simply resting against my shoulder, his burning forehead pressed against the fabric of my dress and it radiates so strongly that I cannot help but feel its heat through the thin cotton. I whisper into his ear as I take off his shirt, his trousers, his socks and undershirt. _Please, Joe, don't despair. Eugene is here now. You're going to be all right._

But I would be a selfish woman indeed to say that the succor is intended entirely for him.

It is for me as well.

The entirety of the night is spent keeping Joe cool. Eugene repeatedly disappears through the door, into the darkness, to replace the melted snow in the water while I stay behind to ward off the slinking figure of death. He hides away somewhere in this room, waiting for the slightest chance to strike, but I will not let it have him.

But as night grows old and weary, finally dying on the hearth of morning, hope begins to rekindle in the new light that trickles through the high attic window. Eugene takes his temperature one last time before Joe is replaced back in his bed on account of a relieved smile and the onset of fatigue that has been waiting all night to find its way into the medic's sharp features. It finds me too; I am a vessel of weariness, nothing more but the spirit of exhaustion wading through the new flood of dawn.

Eugene sends me downstairs to fetch some water to drink as he dresses Joe in warm clothes.

And when I return, I find myself intruding upon a scene that warms my heart to its chilled core.

At his bedside, the young savior kneels before the salvaged husk of soul that has skirted the edge of death all throughout the night. Joe is blinking wearily at his angel of mercy, all traces of delirium gone from the mask of pallor, and it is the real Joe I see smiling up at Eugene. He is tired, he is weak, but it is _him_ and for that I cannot be anything less than entirely grateful to God and whatever guardian angel may be here now.

As he drapes a cold cloth over Joe's glistening white forehead, Eugene regards the quiet motion of gratitude.

And he smiles too.

* * *

Foot notes: So marks the beginning of a metamorphosis. :)


	6. Forgive and Forget

_Author's Notes: _**HAPPY OFFICIAL 1,000 HITS TO OF FIRE AND ICE DAY! :D **Thank you so much to everyone who is reading this. It certainly is a joy to write, so to have you guys enjoy it is certainly a plus! Also, thank you to those who have reviewed. As always, it is much appreciated. :)

Ignore any mistakes in tense or grammar. I have yet to complete the editing process but wanted to get this posted right away. :)

disclaimer - I own nothing of Band of Brothers and no disrespect is intended toward the men of Easy Company. This is merely fiction and is based on the fictional portrayal of Joe Liebgott.

* * *

I recall a most distressing moment, even now from where I am in the present, where every moment through which I passed is now only like walking beneath the shroud of memoirs. They are printed upon the back of my skull, permanent as ink, but never as black as its shade. Light is the only color which may describe these memoirs. Light of my life. The origin of dawn where there was only night before.

I recall that the new light was like a feather. Thinly veiled by the pale faces of windows glancing sleepily inward and withered walls which stretch out their arms to the dewy morning. It slipped through such sessile mediums, as if on a hushed current of breeze, to find me. Joe was asleep. It happened upon me in a state of solitary which felt so jarring, so unnatural against the recollections of the events which has only since passed.

At least, this is what shallow perception had tried to relay to me. Eugene was gone from me and Joe was now completely in my charge. What if I should fail him? Failure, shedding its basest form within the four walls of this room, would come to him, and to me, only in death. Eugene would know what to do if anything should go terribly wrong. _I _would not.

The poor man, as it was, by all rights should be home. At least, in a place that offers him a bed to sleep in, warm covers to envelope him within (arms of sleep waiting like a calm embrace) and a chance to regain what strength he lost. In the pocket of my apron, one that I kept spools of thread and spare needles that I tuck carefully away (as to not poke myself or others), I harbor a letter. Written in Eugene's hand which, as I looked upon it then, was astonishingly neat for that of a young man. It was penned precisely for these thoughts of mine, that plagued every step that meant to lead me to bed, or for tea, or for the door should someone come by. A counteract against doubt that would, if it had the chance, chain me to this attic until Joe was able to leave it on his own.

As an arm reaches out for me, through what I can only fathom is the depths of a still-burning fever and the weakness which accompanies it, I know I am most mistaken by such hesitant observation. The letter says so. _He'll be just fine if you leave him for a moment. Don't feel as if you have to stay with him at all times. Don't forget to check in on him once and a while, but do get some rest, Miss. It will do the both of you some good. _

"_Stay_," comes the rasping voice, the throttled symphony of wheezes and strangled breaths and sighs all encased by one singular word. It seems, as the phrase finds me in the midst of such driven purpose, that the diction is entirely too small for such menagerie of sound and song. "I don't wanna be all alone."

The words are that of a child wishing for its mother. Warmly spoken, but beneath, in the underbelly of meaning, there was only simplicity. Only that of a man wanting comfort in a room that offered nothing but dust and barrenness. Human contact was something of a relief in sickness. I always longed for it when I was manacled to a sick bed. How could I refuse such a wish with sympathy urging me to acquiesce to his entreaty?

However, it does not escape scrutiny, not after such long rehearsal in the art of desensitization toward his mannerisms and practices, that this is not just the plea of a man on the verge of sanity. Of a man who wishes for comfort softly, who asks of it entirely out of humility and published grace. Not even in the throes of malady does Joe forget who he is, what image of thunder and storm and bottled rage he has impressed upon this house and everything that lives and breathes within its cavern of refuge. No scathing of fever, no weakness of body can betray the strength of his heart. I may amount such strength to obstinacy alone, but to do so would entirely demote every last thread of his being that does not fall under such categories.

Joe is _demanding_ that I linger on in his company. Demanding that I bend to his will. There is no _please, _no _won't you stay,_ no garnish of politeness which marks the delivery of such words. It is as if he knows, even caught in such webbing afterthought of delirium, that I will relent and that he will reign conqueror over my every will to refuse him.

I am the sea. He is the tempest. I am a captive to his every turbulent design. Where he moves, I move with him. When he is calm, I, too, mirror his serenity.

These are the thoughts which skirt the edges of reason, for I could hardly find logic in devoting any sort of affection toward a man that I have sworn a pest, a stranger, an unwelcomed shard of foreign lodged in the heart of wounded familiarity. The night had passed under such circumstances that did not allow for the study of interpretation until morning bloomed within the secret shadows, tore away the cobwebs of eternal night, and ended the reign of terror that was Joe's wakeful fever dream.

I had sent away Eugene, mere minutes prior, into the cold morning to piece together his own fragments of rest. I remember hoping that he may find them. Bleary-eyed little pebbles in a sea of somnolence.

I would not sleep, though I long for it, despite what his letter dictated so subtly as order, not insinuation. Every cavity within me is emptied of it, depleted of every will to go on. And though my knees buckle and my eyes ache for the depths of the void, of seeing nothing, of taking in nothing but the moving picture of dreams, I cannot go to them. I couldn't leave him, not like this, and so I remain. Sleepless. The embodiment of restlessness locked within its unyielding shell.

Sanity, the old hag who rusts away in loneliness and decay, she asks of me what sentiment drove me to fear for the safety of such a man. Why it is that I was so very afraid that he should die? This pest, says she, who scatters his filth like ashes of his being into my floorboards, infuses the soul of wilderness, of savagery, into my domestication. This source of nuisance who steeps the purity of my reputation in the very essence of his influence until all but white remains.

She reminds me of the scarlet regret which reflects in the altered character, as if I may find the mirror of my every reservation, every emotion, every scar in Joe's footsteps, in the pallor of his countenance that is like starlight in its elegant radiance. Every color but blamelessness I may find there. Surely only he may be the offender who has caused this estrangement of mine from the town of Aldbourne?

Why should I care if he should live or die?

I now know the answer, but then, I stood in that little room where gray shadows huddled together in corners, shunning the light and everything beautiful within it. I stood in a field of questions, numerous as the lush grasses in a meadow. But there was no answer to find me, not then. I see now that I, like Joe, was too stubborn for my own well-being. For my own heart and soul to bear.

But this is now.

Back then, I was certainly the picture of mislead tenacity in matters of heart.

Young heart, little heart, who knows so little in her inexperience with man and his many intricacies. She knows not what webs they may weave, what tangles may wait to snare her, what gentle sways of slow murder might meet her if she should accept invitation to such feelings that experience would surely protest. She knows no better than what she may conjure from her own whimsical devices.

_Come, Alice! _Said she. _Don't be such a ninny. You are only helping the poor boy! Why should you fear proximity to him when it is strictly platonic? Show him mercy, dear girl! Show him compassion in his time of need. Whatever did your mother raise you for if not to be the patron of kindness itself? _

He called for me once more, never by name, and I broke from my trance as his gentle voice finds my shoulder and slithers over it, curling up in the shell of my ear.

It must have been long, my standing there aimlessly, doing nothing but staring at blank wall and painting upon them the colors of my restless mind. I inhale, trembling from the inside out, and find myself turning despite the innermost battle engaged between reason and compassion. From first glance, I may take that compassion is steadily growing closer to victory as the seconds pass and I grow ever closer to him.

I am smiling a little as I fold myself into the chair that I have brought to his bedside, and I quietly fasten my hands into the billows of my ruffled apron. My heart twists within the noose of such hopes that have deceived it. Perhaps logic is right.

I find myself searching his eyes, eyes that are deeply pocketed in flesh tarnished red by the corpse of fever.

"Would you like for me to read to you a little while?" I utter to him, so softly, _please do not break beneath my heavy words, little glass figurine._

His red-tarnished lids draw back for only a moment, and with what seems great effort on his part, as if to issue his consent to my idea.

From memory, I partake of a poem my father used to recite to me as he bounced me upon his knee, back in times framed with happiness and contentment that only memories could render possible for me to experience now. For a moment, I am silent, as to collect the utterances of lyric and rhythm to me, and then I place my gentle focus upon him. He is waiting, hushed, and his eyes are closed, but I know he does not sleep.

_Soldier, soldier come from the wars,  
Why don't you march with my true love?  
We're fresh from off the ship an' 'e's maybe give the slip,  
An' you'd best go look for a new love.  
New love! True love!  
Best go look for a new love,  
The dead they cannot rise, an' you'd better dry your eyes,  
An' you'd best go look for a new love._

The noose loosens. I am free.

* * *

Yesterday found Joe asleep. Through morning, through afternoon and well into the night he did not stir, not until dawn at last roused him. Before long, during his own long spell of rest, I decided it was safe to gather to me my own semblance of sleep and curled into the coverlets of my bed for a while. Duty soon flew to my bedside, her eyes wide, her mouth parted in sheer fright of what results may have come of her forgetfulness, and she shook me awake. _Your charge, you silly twit! What of him? Do you think of no one but yourself!_

I peeled myself away from the light, dreamless doze and observed the little tendrils of light that stole through my drawn curtains. They played upon the fabric, goaded them to open a little further so that they may frolic easily through the obliging window panes. I did not heed them fully, only afforded a passing glance, and made my way into the kitchen to fix Joe something to eat. He had not taken anything the night of his descent into malady, neither had I the resolve to revive him to eat yesterday. Every time I worked up enough courage to go through with such an act, I would happen upon him in the most delightfully darling position (an arm flung over his forehead, his long, svelte figure bunched up into folds like that of a contented child, his supple lips parted to breathe in a little deeper the essence of a dream). In the end, I announced myself a coward, a soft-hearted girl of the silliest proportions, and resolved to simply sit in my corner of the room and sew for a little while.

The cabinets offered little accommodation for my charge. There was the marmalade that father had brought for me some months back (which was, to my dismay, beginning to show signs of rot), cabbages and turnips for cabbage soup, and a stock of tea that looked as though it would never run out. An endless supply of it. In the breadbox, sitting ever so patiently as it waited for use, I found a bit of stale bread left. It would have to do.

After fixing a bit of chamomile and honey tea, I arrange the bread on a small plate and carry this meager breakfast up the winding staircase. The door, ever in a state of carefully devised openness as of late, groans as I press all my weight upon it, as if it is laughing at such feather-light pressure. The hinges give way regardless and I have crossed the room by the time it glides into a noiseless halt.

The fixings are placed upon the end table and I situate myself into my sentry. At first, I am resigned to wait until he wakes as I find his eyes closed, his lungs steadily working through the motions of breathing (though they are labored exertions…listening to the poor boy breathe is almost impossible to bear). But as soon as I am transfixed to my chair, his eyes crack open, stimulated by the sudden onslaught of such sounds. I cannot help but smile as I outstretch my hand to brush back a wayward strand of dark hair from his pale forehead and feel that there is no longer any danger of searing fever. He is warm, pleasantly so, although I recall from Eugene's letter that intermittently he may suffer from chill. I take note of this and resolve to bring up more quilts if necessity calls for them.

At the moment, I must entice him to eat. He is frightfully skinny, even more so than his habitual figure that appears fit for mockery of starvation. Now he seems almost corpse-like, every hollow of his face and body giving way to gape even deeper, even wider, as if he will fall into himself and disappear.

That is, if I do not force nourishment into his emaciated body.

"Joe," I call to him, steadying my tone to a gentle hum as to not startle him in his current fragility. "Joe, how are you feeling?"

"Like shit," he replies, his voice like gravel against my ears. The rasp is accented by the hoarseness of his throat, from all the coughing I can only assume. "Did you even have to ask?"

"Yes," I counter sternly, narrowing my eyes at him. "Yes, I believe I must ask. To make certain you have not slipped back into delirium. If you can talk, you can eat. Here you are, now. Eat this."

During my gentle scolding of him, he has somehow found the strength to sit himself up properly, and his back is cushioned against the headboard of my old bed by the pillow. His hair is all a mess, a darling mess at that, and though he is wincing ever so slightly at bending his painful lungs to situate himself upright, I cannot express the relief that washes through me. It is a coursing wave that fills every part of me, to see that he is at least cognizant of the world around him, and to find that he is ever his stubborn self.

However, the gladness is abruptly cut short as the aforementioned stubbornness comes to a full head and reminds me of why I detest it so ardently.

He takes one look at the stale bread I have brought for him, all I have at the moment, and scowls, pushing it forcefully away from him. "No," he insists. "No food."

"Joe, you _must _eat," I declare to him, as it is my turn to insist this time around. I push the food toward him again, but this time it ends up on the floor as his force renders it flying off the plate. What a _perfect_ waste of food.

"I said no _fuckin' _food, all right?" He's too weak to shout, but I can hear the makings of a good squall rising up in him. It surfaces in his features, flashes of lightning in his eyes, but it is a far off threat. No tempests shall send their bluster here. "I've been swallowing my own goddamned _snot _all night and the last thing I wanna do right now is _eat_."

"You are going to starve," I tell him.

"Who gives a fuck," he snaps back, and I can almost feel the sting of his disregard. Thankfully, I have become immune to such pangs of contempt and can simply blaze right through the steps of recovery from them.

"I'm afraid _I _do," I contend, and reach for the tea cup instead. "Will you at the very least have some tea? It will ease your sore throat, if that is any consolation."

"You Brits and your boiled water," he scoffs, but there is a smile hidden underneath somewhere, if I should choose to find it. I unearth the amusement and find that though it is weakened by pneumonia, it is still undeniably beautiful in its candor. Not to mention, its transitory state. It is gone before I can revel in it for very long. _Nothing gold can stay._

"Will you drink it?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, give it here already," he replies indignantly, rolling his eyes as he takes the china from me. I watch intently as he brings it to his lips to take a drink, and there is no doubt in my mind that would deter me from thinking that he does not feel my gaze fixed so unwaveringly on him.

The proof becomes apparent as his gaze flashes and fastens to me. "What, you don't trust me to drink it by myself? You gotta coddle me every step of the way?"

"Yes, I believe I do."

"You're not my _mommy, _lady, and I don't think you've the license to act like her either."

"Then it is altogether well for me that I don't have to follow your code of conduct in this world, isn't it?"

He snorts and resumes his former position. But what I have assumed will only be a taste, a first sip, becomes a long, purposeful swallow. He drains the contents of that cracked little china cup in a matter of seconds, his pale, elegantly sculpted throat arched back to take in every last drop that may seek to evade his searching lips. It is a very unmannerly sort of display if I ever saw one.

As of late, I have become immune, as well, to his blatant discount of any semblance of etiquette. Perhaps, I muse transiently, it is merely a facet of his unorthodox charm – that he does not care for what anyone may think of him and that he is ever so glad to prove them wrong when they find that they are unable to resist him.

He slams the china down on the end table, chamomile herbs dripping from his pale mouth. His eyes never leaving me, his focus completely directed toward me, he slowly draws his bare arm over his mouth as if to defy me. It is a pity that where he meant to inspire disgust and frustration, he is only successful in conjuring mirth.

I smile and he, in turn, smiles back.

* * *

During the course of the following week in which Joe is stationed in bed, I come to find that I have never been so depleted of rest.

There is caring for him, which demands a level of attention that may only see fit to encourage exhaustion by the end of the day. Spikes of fever leave me breathless in an attempt to keep him cool, to keep him sane and far from delirium like that night he came home in such a terrible fit of disorientation, but they never amount to the terrifying intensity of that night or even attempt to imitate such proximity to death. I find myself able to calm these elevations in temperature with cold compresses, which often lead to sleepless nights as I am repeatedly dipping the cloth into a bucket of snow-laced water to keep them unbearably cold and counter the heat of the fever.

In the letter of instruction which Eugene had been so kind as to pen for me, he explains that such rises in temperature should occur and that, as long as he is not in any danger of burning up, I should calm them with compresses. I follow his every directive carefully and find that these daunting nights are so far and few between.

A few days following Joe's relapse, I receive Earl at the door with a package of canned chicken soup sent from Eugene. The effect of such discomfort prompted by the visit eclipsed the joy of receiving such happy means of coaxing Joe, the stubborn ox, to eat. _Thank you, Eugene. You are truly an angel of mercy!_

He was polite enough, the poor man, and I convinced myself I was a cruel and spiteful woman for receiving him with such cool, distant manners. Perhaps he had no concept of his part in my ruination. Part of me, the wicked part who delighted in placing the blame of my tribulations on others, pointed her finger at the man and claimed _guilty! _so ardently, so self-righteously, that the declaration of such censure echoed off the walls of my conscience and made it tremble with shame.

Earl happened upon my doorstep at some unearthly hour of the morning with this offering. There was no mistaking his concern as he looked me over, undoubtedly at my wrinkled attire and the brushstrokes of fatigue which underline my every reply, even delving so deep as to afflict my features. I had not so much as glanced into a looking glass for as long as Joe has been sick, so I could only imagine the ruffled state of my appearance.

"Alice!" He exclaims as I take the rather heavy package from him. The man does not seem to notice my struggling with the parcel as he follows me inside, uninvited, where I am far too busy to realize his unsolicited entry while I release the box from my grasp and set it upon the table.

"Darling girl," he whispers, as if he could not believe it. "If I may be so bold for saying this…you look absolutely terrible!"

"I thank you, Earl, for reminding me," I answer bitterly, though the acrid notes escape him in the undertow of derision. "It has escaped my notice, apparently."

"Whatever has happened to you? Why, you have spoiled your beauty!"

"I offer my deepest gratitude for your delivering this parcel for me, but I believe you should be off," I reply, ignoring his thinly veiled insult quite openly. "Do you not have more parcels to deliver down the way?"

"Yes, of course, but they may wait, my dear," he replies, and then motions to a chair. At last, a request for entrance, and though it is tardy I accept it gratefully. As he sits down, I close the door, but make no clear intention of preparing tea as to inform him that it would be a concise visit, that he is welcome only as long as he had a point to make. I wished he would make it fast; already the minutes amble by so interminably that my nerves have begun to ache with supplication to God to make them hasten their pace.

"I have heard," he begins, but clears his throat as he finds it much too obstructed by agitation to go on. I remain patient for what I knew was to come. "Yes, there we are. I have heard, Alice, of the rumors. Heard them speak of your ruination, your descent into the pit of madness, as they term it I believe…and I cannot help but recognize that I must take the blame for this. It was I who spoke of your guest's arrival to my wife. Dear creature that she is, there is no room in her heart for pity, nor discretion I fear."

He pauses again, the familiarity of his countenance beginning to disappear beneath layers of age-worn care and concern. He brings a hand to his lips, as if to silence them, and his eyes speak of a glimmer – one that, if not released of their remorse, they should become consumed by it.

"Alice, there is no mistaking your goodness," he ventured at last. "That you are a gentle soul and that your compassion knows no bounds. You would take in a hungry wolf if it came to your door, knowing well enough that it would not be convinced otherwise by your kindness toward him to spare you. I know your father has not been here to protect you from these vultures and, dear girl…I must profess my sincerest apologies for what I have done to you. I should never have breathed a word. You might have been safe. And now you are here, starving, no work, no pay, because of my folly…"

The portion of my soul that had been so strained with the offense of his guilt begins to thaw, like ice drawn into the advent of spring's newborn warmth. He had not meant at all to ruin me. It was simple circumstance, accident, which brought about these events. And here was I, the purest entity of selfishness and cruelty to ever walk the face of this earth…I was so eager to eject my troubles on his shoulders.

Perhaps it was his fault, but only by association. It was his wife that deserved the punishment of my disdain, but I knew her not. And so the castigation was therefore reflected upon poor Earl by a heart that was too eager to place responsibility where it was not deserved.

Poor man indeed.

"Earl-"

"No no, Alice," he interjects, smiling through the mask of regret that has shaped to the form of his face. "No, you must not forgive me. I will not allow it. There is no forgiving what cannot be undone. But if I may, I must make it up to you somehow. And I have a way, Alice dearest…I have a way indeed."

Before I could stop the man, he rose with a sigh, as if only his resolve would carry him, and in his wake as he hurriedly left the house entirely, he left a pouch of coins.

I counted them later, as I watched over Joe during the night. Arranged inside, waiting to be spent, was a total of forty pounds.

* * *

The week during which Joe is arrested to his sickbed passes ever so slowly, but at last, its end is near. I have written to Eugene this very morning, when I crept into Joe's room to find him alert and his eye quite bright. Not with fever, but with vigor. I note, in this correspondence, that Joe has even been able to reach the outhouse on his own feet by now, no assistance from me required.

I at first insisted he use a chamber pot as it was too much a risk for him to be outside in that frightful cold, even to relieve himself, but Joe would not sacrifice his dignity even for the sake of his health. And so for the past week or so, I helped him to the structure, during which time I would go inside the house to allow him some privacy and make him tea or food or gather warm blankets for him. Buried in layers upon layers of jackets and shawls, he would stagger back inside, and I would retire him to bed.

It is a feat that would seem so commonplace and silly to the uniformed passerby, but to me it is such a victory over his malady that I cannot help but impart the detail to Eugene. Perhaps it is not so gracious to be writing of such things, especially to men, but the profession of a nurse is not a gallant one, I have come to find. There is much to stomach under such pretenses of occupation. Handkerchiefs coated in mucous to wash, bedclothes stained by sweat from fever to strip and replace, even the occasional puddle of vomit to mop up. Never a pleasant experience, but a necessity nonetheless.

Earl has been sadly missing these past few days. And when I finally inquired after him to the new postman that came to my door religiously, day after day, he spoke of the man's retirement. I should not be seeing him at my door any longer.

It is late evening by the time the knock comes to my door. My ears have been searching for the sound all through the day and when it finally comes they prick upwards, like that of a deer perceiving the snap of a twig in an empty forest. Joe is lying on his back, flipping through the pages of my Henley collection, finally resigned to his fate to be bedridden until permitted to leave it.

All on account of my equal tenacity in keeping him there. After much arguing on the subject, I insisted I would have to chain him to the bedpost, and that I would certainly not be disinclined to do so if he did not simply relent like a good boy and keep to his current station. This, somehow, convinced him of my severity and he at last surrendered.

He, too, heard the knock it seems as I look back at him.

"You stay right here, Joe," I tell him. "You will not move a muscle until Eugene gives you permission, is that clear?"

"Whatever the hell you say, Al," he mumbles petulantly under his breath, still flipping through Henley, like a small child who has not gotten his way and is quite put out by the fact.

As I ghost through the room, a mere spirit rendered silver beneath the moonlight, I cannot help but offer a smile in regard to his new moniker for me. It was such a sudden occurrence, its advent, that I almost did not realize it when he first called me _Allie. _I cannot even recall when he began the habit, only that I was partial to it and could not convince myself to feel otherwise.

Eugene's visit is quite succinct as he breezes through the house, carrying his garment of omnipresent calm with him, as if it tarries in his coattails, in the very soles of his shoes. With him, he brings very similar instruments as he did the night he came in desperation. He pulls out a stethoscope and a thermometer, tools of the trade that will decide if Joe is fit to be walking about just yet. I stand behind him, wringing my hands, and the appendages begin to protest such ceaseless motions as they turn pink and white beneath the pressure.

He listens to Joe's lungs first, pressing the apparatus against the bare, pearly-white chest and inclining his ear toward the amplifier. "Breathe deep for me, Joe. Real deep so I can hear anything rattling around in there, all right?"

Joe, for once, does as he is told without objection. I amount this to Eugene's underlying ability to project tranquility and authority over his patients without ever so much as raising his voice to them. He merely has to touch them, speak to them, and they bend to his will like marionettes dancing for their puppeteer.

Eugene listens for a moment, quite still as he bends over Joe's chest, and then he rises and looks to me. "Lungs are clear."

I breathe a congratulatory sigh of relief as he checks Joe's forehead for a preliminary test. "Temperature seems okay," he mentions passively, but instructs Joe to open his mouth all the same to receive the thermometer. When he takes it out and inspects it, he informs the room of its result. _Ninety eight._

Within ten minutes of Eugene's arrival, he is gone and Joe is cleared to return to training the following week.

I am downstairs cooking dinner when he comes. At first, I do not hear him, as I am so involved in my work, but once I hear the chair slide back, I glance over my shoulder and find a thicket of dark hair eclipsing my line of sight. A quiet smile takes to me, fitting itself upon the corners of mouth like hands sliding into an old, worn glove. I leave the soup to simmer for a few moments and sit down adjacent to him.

The instant I find myself situated, he reaches into his pocket and digs around for a time until his hand resurfaces, bringing a small square of wrapped paper with it. He flings it to the table in my general direction and it slides toward me. The word _Hershey _embellishes the frontage of the papered square. It is a foreign word; I have never heard of it before.

"What?-"

"It's a Hershey bar."

"A _what?_" I ask, picking up the object. An enticing smell seems to shift and waft towards me as I bring it closer to my face to take a careful whiff of it.

"It's _chocolate_," he replies, shrugging nonchalantly, sniffling his still-stuffy nose. "I've gotten tired of the stuff, having it shoved in my rations all the time. I usually trade it for cigarettes, but I figured you might like it instead."

I pocket the treasure for later, burying it in the safety of my apron. "Joe, I-" I smile, but attempt to find words suitable enough to convey the sentiments of such a gift. "Thank you. It is very kind of you to share this with me."

"Don't get all mushy on me, Allie," he snorts, rolling his eyes as he turns his head to look at me. "It's just a fuckin' Hershey bar. You don't gotta get all weepy over a little square of goddamned chocolate, all right?"

For a moment, we are silent. He watches me and I watch him. We are regarding one another, it seems. Measuring the amount of humanity, of worth, in every tendon, every blue-green vessel that courses beneath our skin. His eyes are framed by a thoughtful scowl, creasing at their edges, and I am simply faceless. Emotionless. Observation strips me of all feeling and replaces logic in its stead.

I am the first to look away as I realize the intensity of his gaze. He clears his throat. "What the hell is wrong with you anyway, huh?"

"Whatever do you mean, Joe?"

"Don't play innocent with me. You know what I'm talkin' about," he looks almost wild as he sets his jaw forward, his teeth bared, but it is only deep rumination that strikes upon him this flare of misleading ferocity. "You coulda gotten rid of me up there…you had your chance for two weeks. Now you're stuck with my scrawny ass until it leaves for war."

"True, yes I could have."

"Then why didn't you?" He challenges.

"I believe I have found that conflict is more satisfying than peace of mind."

He scoffs and retrieves a long, white cigarette out of the pack he has stashed away in his breast pocket. Like an automaton, programmed to detect his every movement, I reach out to snatch the pale stick of smoldering death away from him. Clearly, he is not amused by this, and his eyes flash dangerously as he watches me retreat as if from enemy territory.

"The _fuck!-_"

"You have only just cheated death. Must I save you from it again on account of your tireless obstinacy?" I overturn my hand as I realize he still has the entire, untouched pack in his pocket. "Hand over the pack as well, Joe. The lighter too. I am certain Eugene will keep you in line while you are away from this house."

He curses under his breath and slams the pack down on the table, running his tongue over his gritted teeth. "Happy? You just stripped me of my one reason to live."

"And what reason might this be? To outsmoke a chimney?" I reply, unwilling to mask my defiance. _Stubborn _man. "Don't be such an infant, Joe. It will only be a few weeks."

"Might as well use them if they give them to us," he retorts. "What good is a waste of rations?"

I shake my head at such thoughts. "It is not right…providing men with such means to nurture bad habits."

He chuckles and fastens his arms together over his chest, but it is not a line of defense this time that I am confronted with it. "Ever heard of the army making a mistake?"

"No. No, I do not believe I have."

"Well, _I_ have. Many times. Been a witness to it too on a daily basis since day fuckin' one."

He takes in a deep breath through his nose, making his nostrils flare. "Anybody ever tell you that you're the nosiest little thing that ever walked this earth?"

"Here and there," I reply teasingly. "I have one condition, however, if you are to continue staying peacefully in this house."

"Oh yeah? And what might this condition be?"

"You must call me by my name. It is Alice. Not lady, not bugger off, not sod this or sod that, not Allie or Al. Simply Alice."

"I think the world just ended. You cursing? In your native tongue?" He laughs and then proceeds to appease me. "All right, all right...if it means that much to ya, I'll call you by your name."

I share with him a private smile.

Yes, that will do very well, I suppose.

* * *

Footnotes: I suppose it got a little thin at the end, where all the dialogue is, but hopefully it turned out okay. Thanks for reading! :D


	7. Trouble Comes But Once a Year

_Author's Notes: _I know this one sucks. Bear with me, I'm experiencing a block in regards to this story, but I plowed through it for the time being. I'll try and make the next one sensational to make up for this poor excuse for a chapter. HUGE THANKS to Emilie for all the help and such! It is much appreciated. :)

I'll edit this later, by the way.

disclaimer - I own nothing of Band of Brothers and no disrespect is intended toward the men of Easy Company. This is merely fiction and is based on the fictional portrayal of Joe Liebgott.

* * *

In his youth, Alfred Gray could be defined by one solemn, all-condemning word that would haunt him for the rest of his life – _trouble_. It was not because he was all bad, nor could he boast a pure goodness that was hoped for in a suitable prospect. He was simply an in-between. A lingering shadow on the bridge between the natures of morality and corruption. One turn, one step in the right or wrong direction could very well lead to ruination...or redemption.

Doomed to be born into indifference of fate, he was forced to choose his own path long ago.

* * *

Early December;;

* * *

Silence.

Not a knock upon my door, not a stitch or needle weaving its symphony of sounds into the drowsy air. There is no rustle of satin, not a silky smooth resonance of muslin or silk. Not even the scratchy sort of voice of wool can be heard within these four walls, these quite barren partitions (a wintry desert awaits outside to permeate the weakened defenses, concealed behind dunes of snow). I am a seamstress now of the most desperate kind – one without the means to support her livelihood and her ward.

I have taken to worrying upon my hands again. Fingernails are the selected target, caught between teeth that might chatter if I do not engage them in something of an activity between intervals of cooking, pacing and sitting, listless, back into a chair. Chatter from fear, from fitful concern, from everything but cold (I have become so desensitized to such invasion of frost, my nerves too frozen to feel much of anything but warmth).

It simply cannot be helped. Not a soul will venture near this cursed place, not even if necessity calls them to me. In passing, many a colorful rumor has ensnared me, captured me by the throat until I may not breathe until I have fully taken to heart the dire circumstance I find myself in. One quite almost made me laugh upon hearing it. According to some, I provide sanctuary to all the demons of Hell in this derelict old structure. Another claims, swears upon Heaven's gates (that they should not part for him if lies blemish his soul upon his death) that I am the _madam_ of a brothel. Aldbourne is steeped in a very expertly run rumor mill. I am a cad, a witch, a common prostitute. Everything but what I truly am – a young girl with nothing but her reputation to recommend her skill as a seamstress. And even this is gone from me now.

The red stigma is upon my door, staining the snow with my guilt, and whosoever should pass me shall be convicted too of treason.

I am a marked woman.

But it is not for the sake of my own well-being that I entertain such ghastly, nearly insatiable, little monsters of dread. They chase after every thought I spare for Joe. Gnashing little teeth that sink into the proverbial flesh of my growing reverence for him. _Sacrifices, _they whisper, _must be made._

There is no more wood to be scavenged from my tree in the courtyard, stripped bare and left to rot in winter's slow choke-hold, and so the stove lies quiet in its corner, a creature of old ashes. It does not burn all day and the only heat which fills the room is paltry at best, as the oven is lit only to prepare meals, and such meager warmth is too frail to best the austere onslaught of cold.

Joe lounges at the table, long limbs tangled with the legs of the table, as if he were engaged in a contest of superiority with the stolid piece of furniture. His fingers drum against the pitted surface, Morse code renditions of his cryptic thoughts, and when I round his chair to set bowls of porridge before the both of us, I encounter a man lost in a labyrinth of musings. So lost within them that there might have been no hope of retrieving him from such intricate bonds if a knock did not come at the door, interrupting the both of us in the midst of wading through our own separate vexations.

I do not expect callers. Before even looking to the door, perhaps to trace the outline behind the gauze curtains and surmise who may be standing behind it, I turn my questions toward Joe.

"You have not asked anyone to come, have you?"

He doesn't even meet my inquisitive gaze. Within the confines of his breast pocket, his hand gropes blindly for his zippo, a cigarette already softening beneath the bow of his lips. "Nah," he replies, nonchalant, the perfect depiction of detachment from the situation. "If we tried to fit one more damn person in this house, I'd bet it fuckin cave in all around us."

Another knock ensues this rather uncalled for remark, though Joe has relinquished his reign of antagonism, called for armistice between us. I abandon my porridge to answer my anonymous caller while Joe, behind me, scrutinizes his own portion in a very similar manner of inspecting something macabre, something infinitely disturbing. The clamor of his decision is quite clear as the spoon clatters against the cracked old bowl and he pushes it away from him, scathing the table with his blatant rejection as it slides forward.

The zippo clicks. Smoke fills the room.

And as the door falls back, like a curtain of painted wood, I find _him_ standing there. Mussed by long travels, I suppose, and looking as if he carries the plague of weariness, but nonetheless there. Upon his feet and bolstered by the thick, ankle-high snow.

"_Father?"_

Behind me, all motion stills and the house is again the only creature able to elicit sound.

The elder man's eyes sparkle, all mischievous glint and playful fire that contrasts so starkly against the cool, dispassionate blue of his irises. He tips his hat forward, a wordless greeting, and he follows with the parting of his mouth. The intention to speak aloud his fond salutation.

"My darling! Oh, my little sparrow, my little dove! How do the blue skies fair my love?" He cries as if it is the first time he has rested eyes upon me, his own daughter, and staggers forward to encase me with his arms. The sleeves of his coat, I duly mention to myself, are quite haggard and a sore sight to behold.

"Father, you are _drunk," _I remark as he loses footing and nearly tumbles into me. Somewhere, in the background of this old house, I faintly perceive the sound of a chair being pushed back and footsteps coming to my aid.

Father seems bemused by such an obtrusive accusation and his brows knot together, his unfocused eyes still dangling over my figure even as Joe catches him and leads him toward a chair. "I can find no reason as to how this affects the heavens."

At last, he acknowledges his assistant and, upon an unsteady axis, shifts to take in the look of the fellow. Joe's expression remains unreadable, but I find myself tracing the same lines of suspicion in his eyes, upon his pale brow.

"And this?" Father gestures absently toward Joe, towering over the slouched, care-worn figure. "Your beau, I presume?"

"This is Joseph Liebgott," I reply. "He has been quartering here since early September."

"Ah, yes! Quite right you are!" He chuckles, snapping his fingers as if this is all quite a jolly good jest to him. The creases in Joe's brow deepen. Darkness falls over the angelic countenance, casting it in molds of wary shadow. "I recall, yes, I do recall, Alice love. The post came that morning and it was a letter from the yank army. Said they needed a place to stick one of their men and I could find no reason why you shouldn't be able to invest a little of your time in charity, good girl that you are!"

Father's head lolls a little jarringly to the side as he glances upward at Joe, outstretching his hand. "Quite a meeting this turned out to be, eh lad?"

Joe quirks an obnoxious smile that too closely resembles a glower for caution's sake. He decides to ignore the hand, and the gesture, completely as he then turns away, muttering petulantly under his breath. "Name's Joe, you old rumsoaked _geezer_."

I praise God and every fiber of heaven that it escaped father's notice, this little sidelong commentary of Joe's that slipped into the background of the scene. There is never quite the possibility of anticipating his reaction when he's out of sorts like this.

"Alice, be a good little girl and break out the brandy, won't you?" He requests, his front of good-natured feeling and adoration now completely assembled. "I feel this dreadful cold all the way down to the marrow of my old bones! Doesn't quite help that it is as cold as a witch's teat in here!"

Father's eyes light up, blue candles caught flame in the gray-washed dullness of this room, as he notices the bowls of porridge placed on the table. He takes the closest available to him, my own ration, and begins shoveling large spoonfuls into his mouth without delay, without question as to why the food was even there in the first place. Joe is standing across the way, arms crossed, eyes quite narrowed now. There is no mistaking the saplings of disgust taking root in the depths of his gaze.

I cross the room to fetch the brandy and Joe sees fit to trail after me, stalking my footsteps in the same fashion of a hunter, a predator. The cabinet which houses what little alcohol I keep here, mostly for father's infrequent visitations, is within earshot of the table. But the man stationed at there, filling his alcohol-sated belly with tepid porridge, does not seem to heed the pair of us as I stoop to my knees to acquire the half-drunk remnants of brandy. Joe is beside me before I can even wrap my hands around the neck of the bottle.

"Who the hell is this guy?"

"It is _strange_. I did not take you for hard of hearing." I reply, a touch acerbically if sharper ears were to receive my droll retort.

"You're real funny, you know that?" He reflects the severity of my tone with ease. "Maybe you shoulda been a comedienne instead of a seamstress. The hell is he doin' here, huh?"

At last, the distinctive curve of the brandy bottleneck seems to scuttle beneath my fingers, knowing quite well what has been asked of it, its duty to the voracious appetite waiting, unhinged, for the drink. I guide it carefully through the myriad of the small collection, taking great measures to avoid upsetting the established order of the cupboard. It is freed, and I cast Joe a pleading glance. "Please, Joe…he is my father. I must take him in when he comes."

"He's a fucking _drunk, Allie_."

"Inebriated or not, he is nonetheless a blood relation and as it is my house, I may do what I wish with my guests."

From behind the veil of secret communication that Joe has thrown over us, I hear a voice call for me. It is rendered nearly formless, without purpose or collective thought altogether, by the poison throbbing in his system. Joe and I exchange quiet glances, mine of entreaty and his of unmasked defiance.

I turn away from this aggressor of good intentions, bourbon in hand.

"Alice, little dear, have you no logs to stoke the fire?"

* * *

I stand before the mirror and find the reflection to be that of a stranger.

Perhaps it has been too long, my absence from the looking glass. Old friends must nurture their correlations or they should fall away, fray in the hands of father time. The ever-shifting sands of moments passing which flow through the hourglass do not allay, are affected not by weather or war or human consequence. They simply thrive. Intertwine with the currents of human existence and their merging affects us all.

My hands, in their disbelief, reach for the gaunt face in the glass. It does not yield like water, does not flitter outward in ripples of distortion, beautiful destruction of stillness. My fingertips can sink no further into the hard shell of my reflected image than gravity may allow. I am forced to observe stark clarity. Unabashed truth that will not sway with the supplication of mere wish.

Candlelight is kinder, as it softens the lines that inhabit my expressions as a hermit seeks shelter in a hollow cave. I have not smiled often in the months passed. In fact, as I inspect the depiction, I may find no vestiges of emotion at all. Not a singular inflection of humanity. No wearing down of youth by the advent of care, of responsibility. No features whetted by sorrow or defeat. There is nothing there. As if I am made entirely of shapeless wax.

Have I truly evaded my emotions for so long that they should abscond completely? Without fair warning, without care as to how I should feel of their departure? It is as if I have lost old acquaintances – the sting is not painful enough to elicit tears, but there is no mistaking the dull ache that beats in time with my thudding heart.

It is as if I am empty. A tree that no longer bears fruit, a flower that ceases to bloom.

I look to the brush stationed upon my vanity. It awaits my attentions, ever patient, ever watchful, and is the only accent that decorates the bereft furniture with femininity. There is no powder for my nose, no rouge for my cheeks, no blush of color for my pale lips. Perfume is much too expensive, it snubs this very house and takes to the more exquisite creatures of rank in society. It is no matter. I have no use for such details of female divinity. The religion of decoration escapes me and I have no dire wish to catch it.

The best I may do with presenting myself appropriately is my hair brush. It had been my mother's before…

It is here that I halt such invasions of history. There is no use for relying on the past to establish an object in the future. It is simply a brush. Tamer of wilderness which presents itself upon my head. Solemnly, without necessity of thought, I retrieve the article of hygiene by its handle and guide it through the unkempt tendrils.

Just as I begin this ritual, I hear footsteps approaching my door. They are sturdy, purposeful, and lack the stutter of my father's inebriated gait. I may only assume that it is Joe haunting the corridors, though I cannot fathom why it is that he would seek my company after the hushed skirmish which wormed its way between us this morning. Apology did not seem likely to be delivered on either side.

In the midst of my routine, I set down my brush upon the vanity and turn, slightly, in my chair to beckon him inside. "Joe," I call softly, tuning my ears for any indication of his hearing me. "Joe, if that is indeed you standing outside, then please _do _come in."

The knob turns and a small resounding groan fills up the room to its brim as the door opens, Joe's svelte figure slipping through the entrance. He does not appear awkward, ungainly, upon finding himself in the room of this house's mistress, upon coming in contact with her most private haven, but instead walks in as if it is his own room he is occupying. Hands buried in their pockets, bottom lip curled beneath his teeth as he does when he is wrapped in deep thought, I find him quite unchanged by the alteration of setting. There is a cigarette nestled into the nook of his ear.

He releases his lip with a meaningful click of his tongue. "Your old man is somethin' else, Allie."

"Kind of you to say so, Joe," I reply vaguely.

His retort is deadpan, dangerously skirting that line of disgust that I witnessed earlier in his expression. "That wasn't a compliment."

"Whatever you may say about him, I will not yield. You have no right to dictate what I do with my own family and I must confess that you are _quite_ out of line."

"Oh, so protecting you from that rat bastard is out of line now?" Joe's voice rises. His body expands, growing to fit the inflating anger that he seems too small to hold. "I don't care if he was the god damnned pope, Allie, he's got no right to come in here and feed off you like some fuckin' _bloodsucker_."

"What do you know of his intentions?" I turn on him, rising from my seat, only to find myself immediately daunted by his sheer size. It is as if Joe has become a giant in mere moments, a transformation that seems impossible for mere man, but he has somehow transcended mortal boundaries. "You know nothing of our troubles, Joseph Liebgott, and I should like to think you have the sense to realize that you are a stranger in this house. Just because you have earned my acceptance does not award you the right to judge him so cruelly!"

He searches my eyes, his own turned black by the impending squall of rage. His neck cranes forward, accenting his superiority of stature over me, and the corners of his mouth bend willingly to a delicate snarl. "Somethin' tells me you know no more about him than I do."

Somewhere, deep inside, a chord is struck. A sour note. An aching violence. It rummages through me, finds a place to crawl inside and die, and I am filled with its rot, the stench of painful knowing. There is nothing in me that will rise against this claim, attempt to refute its falseness. Simply because there is no fabrication. In fact, there could be nothing more true than what Joe has unearthed from such secrets that I have not even tried to discover, ever since father took to the nomadic lifestyle and left for me my only inheritance that he had to offer.

I turn away, back to my vanity, and perch upon the chair. A lonely bird in her cage of comfort. I avoid the mirror. Seeing the beginning exposure of certainty in motion would only end in more sour notes to echo off every sweet noise of memory ever made. More internal discord would be conceived.

For a few moments, I return to separating the tangles in my hair. Joe is content with watching, no more words to strike me, no more conflicts to unearth. I wait until I am finished pulling my hair into something suitable for public scrutiny, tied off with a simple blue ribbon, to address him forthrightly.

"I must away to the market for a little while," I say, brushing past him to delve into my only wardrobe, standing lonely in a corner, housing only a few paltry articles of attire. A threadbare wool coat, a few shawls and dresses that have come to be the only clothes I own in the years that have come to pass. "I would be honored if you would accompany me."

"In that?"

He is gesturing to the old coat I am shrugging into. "Yes, why? Is it not suitable enough for you?"

"It doesn't matter what I think of it," he retorts, a little snappishly. "What is that piece of shit gonna do to protect you from the cold, huh? Make it feel sorry for you?"

"Objection is useless, Joe," I answer softly. "It is all I have."

"You're a seamstress, ain't ya?" Joe shrugs indifferently, waving his hand languidly toward the kitchen, the room that serves as my workspace. "Make somethin' for yourself for a change!"

I shake my head wearily, a sigh to accompany it. "It is not so simple. What shall I use to make this fantastic winter coat? My curtains? My bed sheets? The thread that I do not have?"

"Just _get_ some, then."

I walk past him, ignoring his insistence. At the door, I glance over my shoulder, my eyes skimming a hole in my coat. "Am I to assume you are not accompanying me then?"

He sets his jaw in a very firm line, as if he makes to refuse my offer, but he trails after me anyway.

* * *

Despite the deathly cold that threatens to consume me upon emerging from the house, the day is a pleasant one to behold. The world feels as if it has been encased in a snow globe, the heavens a perfect gray sphere above endless plains of white. Flecks of snow begin to fall from the swollen sky, as if someone has shaken the trinket, and we are all merely figurines, imitations of life. Perhaps, here, it may be imagined that there is no war. No adversity. No gossip. Simply art striving to complete the picture of life.

At once, as we leave the courtyard, I begin to shiver. My attempts to hide such physical weakness from Joe are thwarted as he keeps snatching me into his cognizance every time he turns his head my way. The air between us is thick with conflict. I have become so accustomed to the stifling entity that it does not affect me as it once did. I entertain only the sensation of chill that travels up my legs, vines honed with ice, and hope that Joe does not heed such manifestations before we reach the market place.

He rolls his eyes as he steals another glance my way, scoffing his disapproval quite ostentatiously. "For fuck's sake, Al, you're as stubborn as I am."

"Your influence has spoiled me, Joe," I reply through a fit of chattering teeth.

He laughs a little at this and grabs my arm, pulling me a little closer to him. All at once I am embalmed with his body heat, his spicy cologne, and everything about him smells and feels like warmth. "Get over here. I don't bite."

As soon as my body unwinds from the initial shock of his sudden closeness, he takes my arm and weaves it into the design of his. It nestles into the crook of his elbow, completing the encasement of warmth altogether, and there is a gentleness in the way he tucks me into his side that does not escape my notice.

"You know, I had to drag your old man into his room," Joe mentions, as if in passing. "He drank himself stupid at that table. Finished off the whole bourbon by himself."

"Oh? And what were you doing while this occurred?"

A smirk crinkles in the dark angles of his mouth, lips like nipped petals of skin. "Sat there and enjoyed the show. Waited until he was out to drag his old ass to his bed."

When I do not reply to this, he looks down at me, as if he expected an answer. "You shouldn't let him walk on you like that, Al."

The cold makes my breath into its own cloud, sending it to the sky to aid the falling snow. "It is not my place to turn him out, Joe. It is his house, after all. He may as well turn me away."

"_Fuck _if he does," Joe hisses back. "He's goin' to start pinching your savings. I _know_ he is. You're making a mistake, housing an old drunk."

"You don't know that," I reply, tearing my arm out of his. His eyes narrow, but there, in the fathoms of his gaze, I see the smallest ghost of hurt steal across his expression. "And I will no longer discuss this with you."

I trudge onward, braving the cold alone, as Joe strays behind to ignite another cigarette.

* * *

Footnotes: Next chapter on the way soon. :)


	8. In Salvaging the Family Name

**Author's Note: Hello all! Please forgive me for this very overdue update, but here it is! I hope it is up to par with the last chapter, written nearly a year ago (wow, has it been so long?). However, I do promise to go through and edit it as soon as I can, but I'm being rushed at the moment and mus go. Enjoy! Let me know what you think as always. :)**

**Disclaimer - I do not own Band of Brothers. This story is based on the mini-series, not real events.**

* * *

Late December

It is alarming how quickly the state of Joe's temper may change.

At one moment, it may simmer gently, a small burning flame too near the brink of inferno if you will, and I might only know of his tireless campaign against the world and everyone in it by a mere look into the shifting, brooding eyes. Beneath a pale furrowed brow, the dissenting eyes watch him, my father, as he would discuss with no one at all the war and the _demmed Nazis who have no right to go marching about, crushing the lot of us beneath their black tyrant boots with that bloody devil of a leader_. Often, his discussions were tainted with the drink, the clear notes of sobriety nearly always missing from his disjointed speeches. The rum in the cabinet has long since disappeared, the bottle long missing from its contents, and yet father always returns slobbering drunk. I do not have to wonder how this is possible. And it seems Joe is no simpleton in these matters either.

As of late, the flames of his discontent have reached deeper, searing the contented soul cocooned there. It writhes and thrash beneath the weight of the restless burning. This strange unspoken stalemate between old English nomad and fiery American soldier will not last long – soon, it will explode into conflict, and I will fall prey to the role of helpless civilian in the midst of a heated struggle for power.

For the most part, he does not act on his growing agitation in front of my tactless and oblivious father. I like to think it is for the sake of my sanity that he remains at least genteel with him, though it is a hollow and pale civility at best. There are always secret little commentaries that he makes when my father is not within earshot, when there is a liquid pallor in the elder man's eyes that tells me he is far away from us, wandering in some distant unseen land of his imagining. These remarks are in abundance, it seems, as Joe already has a large collection of them ready for his use by supper, when both guest and father are home. I have come to dread the evening meal for this reason.

Meals have become a strangely oppressive affair, occurring mostly in utter silence. The bulk of conversation, if there is any at all, comes from my talkative father. Details of his wanderings, his philosophies and the poor shape of the house are mostly his choice of discussion, but sometimes he will mention the weather, as any well-brought up gentleman has been taught to do. His world-wearied murmur causes some measure of sorrow when hearing it, as it has been whittled down to but a thin spectral imitation of the rich, full-bodied voice it had once been. It is a sign that the great Alfred Gray has been dismantled by fate, by loss and by the war itself. There is now no hope of restoration for him.

The end of supper is arguably the most lively part of the evening, when Joe's cleverly shielded insult toward my father is delivered for the night; in turn, he offers a thinly veiled look of contempt for me and my _cowardice, _as he terms it. He would take his leave by throwing back his chair, the legs skidding noisily across the scarred floorboards, and his stomping up the stairs could be heard from our place at the table. A slammed door would serve as the finale for his reprehensible and juvenile display.

Often, father would turn to me, sunken eyes lit up softly with the borrowed fervor of alcohol. "Such an offensive young beast! It is a wonder you've not been defiled in your bed, dear Alice."

It is no secret, even to my father, that Joe hates him. I see it harden the sweeping angles of his face, hide within the vicious curl of his features. Every empty place within him harbors that hate as if it were fuel for the inner fire, an aching need that must be satisfied. It is the only way Joe knows to react to the menace of my father's presence, as I know he perceives the arrival of the true master of this house as such. Hate, for Joe, always masks an underlying fear – but _what_ fear, I do not know.

Early on it became apparent to me that there is no warmth or hope for even the most basic human affection between them. Always their interaction was carried on in with a cold and ill-borne discretion, one that seems to overthrow the frigid reign of winter and invite into the house a nearly insufferable chill that the weather cannot be altogether blamed for.

In confidence, Joe told me of his worries, his contempt. It was often when my father had been out, the tea cups grown cold within the crescent shelter of our half-frozen hands, and the candlelight brushing soft trails of gold across our careworn faces. During these secret conferences, I would watch the storm from afar as it lurked in the recesses of shadows in Joe's dark eyes. I knew he would not remain subordinate for long.

As I continued my refusal of his claims, marked by my silence on the matter, his rage rose steadily into a mutinous crescendo.

"He's playin' you like a goddamn violin, Alice!" He'd chastise me, the heavenly face contorting into that unnerving feral snarl. "And you're just lettin' him too! What the hell is _wrong_ with you? You got daddyissues or something? For a smart girl, you're sure acting so goddamn stupid…"

These undermining remarks were always the climax of his argument, the last he would leave me with. And often, as he trailed up the stairs, leaving me alone in the dreadfully cold kitchen, my mind would drift away from our recurring argument. It would instead remember the mistreated scuffed floorboards and how, I knew, they would not last long if Joe's tantrums were permitted to continue.

For now, he is caught in a dozing silence. There is a cigarette hiding in the full velvet of his lips, unlit and awaiting its purpose. Precursors to well-meaning conversation linger there, ghosts of intention, and in the dark, outlined graveness of the room I wait quite patiently for them to take possession of their forms and find me here, here in this present darkness. But never do they come to rest in the full, pulsing bodies of words, of the ones he means to tell me – the words that matter.

At last there is a rustling, and with no leaves pawing at the outside of my barren, white-buried door I know it must be him beside me. I have drifted outward, into wayward dreams, into a sea that bears me into a world of thought that I may only see and touch and decipher. The rasp of his voice tickles my ears. It carries me back to the old, rickety table and the watery cold breakfast tea (those little definitions of our intertwined lives).

He lights his dormant cigarette. At once, the air filled with the sound of his breath and the air crackling with smoke. I can feel it, the intimations of its shadow pressing upon me; he is gloating. "Goddamn, I must be a genius or somethin'."

"You give yourself too much credit," I reply, unfolding the hands in my lap to take a sip of the tepid drink before me.

Those eyes and the entirety of their suffocating force turn upon me. The narrowing of them speaks volumes, and he never had to utter a sound for me to know what thoughts he harbors in that obstinate head of his. He is angry – and I know what it is that has provoked his riotous temper.

"Then why didn't you see it comin'?" He bellows, the house shaking tentatively around the threat of his rising voice. "Why do I gotta be the sensible one? That's your goddamn job."

"He is my father, Joe." It is the only account for my sins that I might offer. "I had no choice but to take him in."

"God, Allie, do you really think I believe that?" He scoffs, smoke slithering out of the frame of his flared nostrils. "You made your choice the second that piece of shit walked through that door."

"You will _restrain_ your inflammatory remarks and respect my family, sir," I warn him gently, casting him a look of placid caution.

He stares after me, while I gather myself inward, as if I were the conundrum again, the unpleasant mystery that shackles him to sleeplessness and leaves him groping through the dark ceiling for answers. It is as though I have insulted him. But I know better – Joe is the instigator, the walking tempest, the destroyer of what little self-assembled peace and contentment that one has with their place in life. And as I sit there, shifting and burning beneath his merciless scrutiny, I cannot help but mourn the loss of the equilibrium we had found in one another, the comfort I had once found in knowing I discovered the softer places in his heart and had kindled a…_fondness_ for me. Perhaps it had all been imagined. A fool's dream. And that is what I am…I had been a fool for thinking the pest could have any such feelings for a lowly urchin such as me.

The sound of footsteps gently pulls me back into my own body. I find myself alone, the candlelight shifting beneath a draft that filters through the rotting door frame. Joe has gone. Not even a note of his cool, spicy cologne remains to comfort me in my disillusionment. I have come to a new threshold of discovery; my father is a liar and a thief. And it is not his fault. It is my mother's…for leaving him alone in this cold, unfeeling world.

I stare after the slinking figure of my houseguest. "Goodnight, Joseph…" I call weakly after him. He cannot hear me, tucked deep into the alcoves of his attic sanctuary.

My hands tighten around the wrinkled letter caged within their slightly trembling grasp. The words as smeared slightly, as if tears had graced the surface of them, imbued them with the soulful grief that I can feel radiating off the page. _My daughter, _it begins…and the story is one of sorrow, the lost narrator uncertain and clumsy in offering his words of apology. He has had no practice in the matters of human sensation. The blood-wrought gears and emotive cadence which move a beating heart are intangible mechanisms to him, a thing he once knew but has forgotten in his long, wasted years. All he knows, his most intimate friends, are the cold stars above him and the moon hidden from him behind her sheet of black frozen heaven. How does a man learn feeling from a reticent and heartless sky?

With a sigh, I sink against the unsound structure of the table, folding my arms and leaning my cheek against the sharp angle of my protruding wrist. The letter flutters away, escaping as if a bird from its nest of flesh and bone, and settles upon the drafty floorboards. Before me, the flame begins to struggle to stay alight, clinging harder to the charred wick. I watch its struggle for a long moment, wondering, idly, what I must do to mend the damage that this devastating visit has left in its wake…

Alfred Gray has returned to his life of the faceless nomad – and the rest of my savings, what little I had left, have gone with him.

* * *

Earlier this morning, I had made an attempt to salvage my livelihood, and that of my guest, in first deciding sulking is of no use to me. After breakfast, and Joseph's departure, I commenced writing a series of letters to distant relatives in the north who, in the past, I remember to have been better off than the Gray family. Father had told me, in passing before the war, of their considerable property in Yorkshire. It is a desperate last attempt and perhaps too late but, if I should fail in my endeavors, at the very least I will have tried. It is all I can do.

The letters are costly to send out, but I deliver them into Earl's hands all the same without a word. As of late, the postman has arrived on my doorstep always with his air of contrition, his burdensome garment of regret wrapped around the thin, weary shoulders. I offer him an appeasing smile and a pleasant enough _good morning _to ease his guilt, but behind the guise of impassiveness there lies the stain of deep, scarlet resentment that will never come out. I can only hope Earl may not see it – as swollen as the wounding bitterness has become in the aftermath of my exile, my secret anger grows each time I see the man on my doorstep. I cannot help it. Even my manners cannot allay such a terribly strong emotion.

After the postman's departure, I set out to a certain Mrs. Lamb's place of business, where she runs a quite comfortable laundering operation on the outskirts of the town. Her choice of location is either a stroke of brilliance or that of luck, but either way her way of life is kept comfortable by the consistent flow of soldiers which come to her for their laundering needs. Mostly it is washing and starching, as, to my knowledge, she is no seamstress – but it is a healthy business, and I must commend her hard work in managing it.

At the door of the small storage shed which serves as her workplace, I give a small knock and find the interior alive with steam and an effective bustle. Both Mrs. Lamb and her apprentice look up from their work, with a soft, startled sound escaping absently from the elder woman's thin mouth. The younger woman struggles internally – no doubt the harsh words of her mother and the nature of her upbringing causing conflict to arise upon my arrival.

Anticipating this reaction from her young apprentice, Mrs. Lamb turns to her and allows her to slip outside for a bit of fresh air. The girl nods, curtsying slightly, and slips past me, a disapproving scowl stealing the light from her eyes and the softness from her features. I attempt to ignore the burning in my cheeks.

_Stay strong, Alice. Their disapproval is of no consequence to you. You must stay strong._

"Good morning, Miss Gray." Mrs. Lamb presses her chapped hands into her apron, smearing starch over the white cloth. "Please come in, dear…how might I be of service?"

Upon receiving an invitation, I no longer feel like a trespasser, and move a little closer to her work station. She instead motions toward a small table where a pile of uniforms lie rumpled in wait to be starched and pressed. The room begins to clear, steam slipped out of the open door and into the inviting shell of the glassy, ice-encrusted air.

"Would you care for tea, dear?" She inquires, her voice dulcet and warm in contrast to the unyielding sheath of cold covering the outside world.

"No, thank you," I reply, and she settles more comfortably into her chair. "I will be forward with you, Mrs. Lamb, as I see that you are quite busy. I only wish to inquire after a position here, if you have any to offer."

The woman looks on me as if with pity, and this had been the very last sentiment I hoped to find in her countenance. She has always been a gentle spirit, a woman renowned for her impartial kindness and calm sincerity. In such an anxious little town as Aldbourne, she is undoubtedly a force of reassurance and an object of the townspeople's fragile admiration. In secret, a knot begins to form within the empty places in my stomach; it is useless to wish for things, but nonetheless I envy her security, her status. It keeps her well-fed and supplies her with a contentment that now I cannot easily acquire.

"Oh, Alice-" She starts, interrupted by the wispy breath of a sigh as she steels herself for her own reply. Inside, all semblance of composure begins to crumble, falling into a deep and unnerving state of madness which manifests in the shaking of my hands. I hidethem beneath my moth-eaten shawl; it will not do well for her to witness my fear of her rejection.

"You see dear, it is not you I am against…please, do not take my actions as such. But I _must_ refuse…" She continues on, bending forward to take my hand. My first instinct is to shrink away from her touch, though my heart twists at the thought of snubbing her kindness so openly. It is only that I must not allow her to feel the desperation crawling like little creatures of anxiety through my veins…I must remain strong. I can only hope she will understand.

Sniffling slightly, I straighten my posture and look her in the eye. "I understand, Mrs. Lamb."

"My dear, I don't think you do-"

I interrupt her readily, "I am no simpleton."

She pauses, peering through the fractured, see-through lines of my ailing composure. "I think you mistake me, Alice."

"I know defensive tactics when I see them." I nod slightly to myself, as if trying to reassure my own conscience that I am justified in my answer. "I would not wish to harm your success with my own failures, as I am certain you have heard the rumors. But please, if I might redeem myself in your eyes – none of them are true. I have simply taken in a soldier, quartering him until he leaves, and the town has mistaken my intentions as mischievous and impure designs - "

"Alice, _hush_." She reprimands me as carefully as she can, taking my hand this time without my permission. Inwardly, the coldness that has overwhelmed my senses begins to give way to the gentleness of the lady before me. It requires all the strength left in me to restrain the white hot tears from slipping out of their hidden places, burning dark trails into my white cheeks.

"I do not believe such gossip…I never have," she tells me, her hand soft and pliant against the cold, hard husk mine has become. "You have always been such a good girl. It seems unlikely you would rebel against your modest upbringing, your own strong, gentle nature. I will help you in any way I can but I cannot offer you a position here."

I cannot bring myself to resent her in the same manner that I have come to resent Earl. But it is different for her, the circumstances unlike those with the tactless postman. He is the cause of my helplessness, my inability to provide for myself and the guest who lives under my care. And she – though she must refuse my supplication, it is out of necessity, not the same malice born of misunderstanding like the rest of them. I look up into her eyes, framed in crow's feet and the brushstrokes of age, and find there the empathy that I have not seen in the face of any such person here in Aldbourne. It is enough for me to regain my lost poise, to salvage what little pride there might be left to the soiled name of Gray.

Mrs. Lamb reaches into the pocket of her starch-stained apron and I can hear the musical chafing of coins brushing up against one another. She removes a handful of them, counts them to herself and proceeds to release them into my palm. A certain sickness grips me then…I cannot take her money, not without earning it.

"You may repay me when you can…" She assures me.

I swallow harder against the encroaching mist of tears pressing behind my eyes. "I will. I promise I will."

The creases around her eyes grow deeper and it's as if, for a moment, they are smiling back at me. "I believe you, Alice."

* * *

My pocket seems to sing with each movement of my half-frozen legs on the way home. The refrain is one of a defeated pride and the reluctant victory stemming from Mrs. Lamb's contribution. Part of me is still too sickened by the guilt money to use it. But my rumbling stomach, and the emptiness that lies there (deserted, shrunken), insists that I must.

I purchase only enough food for supper at the market – a loaf of bread and a head of cabbage for soup. On the way home, I fix my eyes on the snowy walks, the white banks soiled and scattered underneath the footsteps of the lively town. People pass me, silently and often gravely in manner, but I pay them no mind. We are not on good terms, me and Aldbourne. We have fallen out – estranged companions who live as if separated by partitions of glass.

It is nearing dusk when I reach home, my limbs filled with an ache as thick and heavy as the very bones which it inhabits. Already, in my head, I am beginning to devise ways to repay Mrs. Lamb, mostly halting at dead ends and impossibilities which are more than a little disheartening.

_Pluck up, Alice._

_No use dreading the inevitable._

At once, when I halt before the dilapidated fence surrounding the Gray household, I find myself facing a small crowd that has gathered around the perimeter of my yard. And these are no ordinary guests – from their dress, I can only assume they are members of the yank Army stationed nearby.

"Excuse me there miss, but are you Alice Gray?" One of them asks graciously, his most practiced manners on display. There's no hiding his American accent, however, and I cannot help but smile at the odd contrast of the man's rough-looking appearance and his imitation of stiff-lipped English conduct.

"Yes, sir – I am her. How might I be of service?"

Footsteps draw the attention of the group to a figure approaching behind me. In unison, we all turn and watch a quite familiar and lovely face (as beautiful and white as the snow which surrounds it) saunter gracefully into view.

"Good evening, Miss Gray." The words dance upon the sensual refrain of his melodic accent, a voice that slithers in and out of focus, as if caught in a dream. Dreams of a place that knows nothing of snow, of cold, of the grey English sky.

A smile breaks the mask of rigid concern I had worn throughout the day. "Oh, Eugene…I have never been happier to see a man in my life."

He chuckles softly to himself, burying his face into his collar in that bashful sort of way that has endeared me to him so permanently. "We were all just hoping you would you be kind enough to patch up our uniforms, ma'am."

Surprise clutches my throat, nearly stifling the words that follow. "_All _of you?"

Eugene smiles a little wild, looking like a mischievous, pale pumpkin gleaming in the afterglow of the setting sun. "Yes ma'am…all of us."

I look back at the flock of soldiers standing in front of my house. Dear God above…there must be twenty of them!

That night, I do not see Joe. He had been asleep when I arrived in the small foyer, a bundle of twenty uniforms under my arm and icy tears adhering to my cheeks. It is just as well…it would not do for him to see me crying, even if it is out of the overwhelming feeling of liberation that has come over me in finding myself with work to be done (at last!). That night, as I nibble on the edge of the fresh bread I purchased earlier that evening, I write to a certain charitable Mrs. Lamb in gratitude for sending over so many of her customers, and all for my benefit (as if I deserved such unprecedented kindness from her, a perfect stranger).

And yet upon the advent of the post this next morning, Mrs. Lamb seems wholly innocent of the entire situation.

_Dear Alice, I did not know these men came to you for their mending. But what a miraculous stroke of good fortune!_

It is an entirely strange affair, but I have never had so much business in my life…I simply cannot complain.

I only wish I could thank this otherworldly agent who has guided so many prospects to me.

* * *

_copyright of Harlequin Sequins, 2011._


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